Passengers wait for their flight at the Damascus International Airport on January 7, 2025
| Photo Credit: AFP

International flights resumed at Syria’s main airport in Damascus on Tuesday (January 7, 2025) for the first time since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al-Assad last month, AFP journalists said.

A Syrian Airlines flight bound for Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates, took off at around 11:45 am (0845 GMT), marking the first international commercial flight from the airport since December 8, AFP correspondents said.

“Today marks a new beginning,” Damascus airport director Anis Fallouh said.

“We started welcoming outbound and inbound international flights,” he said, adding that the first flight was bound for Sharjah.

International aid planes and foreign diplomatic delegations have already been landing in Syria, and domestic flights have also resumed.

On December 18, the first flight since Islamist-led rebels ousted Assad 10 days earlier took off from Damascus airport bound for Aleppo in the country’s north.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday he hopes neighbouring Syria “finds peace”, as rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad advance towards the capital, Damascus. 

“Our wish is for our neighbour, Syria, to find the peace and tranquility it has been dreaming of for 13 years,” said Erdogan, a key player in the region, adding that Syria “is tired of war, blood and tears”. 

Turkey, which has a long border with Syria, has become home to about three million Syrian refugees since the start of the civil war in 2011. 

“Our Syrian brothers and sisters deserve freedom, security and peace in their homeland,” Erdogan added, voicing hope “to see a Syria where different identities co-exist in peace”. 

“We hope to see such a Syria in the very near future,” he said in a speech delivered in the southeastern city of Gaziantep, to which several hundred thousand Syrians fled. 

The Turkish president was long a supporter of the resistance to Assad since the civil war erupted. 

But in recent months Erdogan tried to reconcile with his Syrian counterpart — an olive branch he accused Assad of not grasping. 

“There is now a new political and diplomatic reality in Syria,” he told the crowd in Gaziantep, accusing Damascus of not having grasped “the hand extended by Turkey” through Russian mediation.