DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — The primary global business flight for the reason that fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad landed Tuesday on the Damascus airport.The Qatar Airlines flight landed at Damascus Global Airport, greeted by means of the passengers’ relations and pals inside of a terminal development.Ashad al-Suleibi, head of Syria’s Air Delivery Authority, stated Qatar had supplied help in rehabilitating the airport, which had suffered from years of forget in addition to maintaining damages from periodic Israeli airstrikes.“In truth, there used to be numerous injury from the (Assad) regime to this energetic house and this energetic airport and likewise the Aleppo airport,” he stated.Many passengers had been Syrian nationals coming come for the primary time in additional than a decade.Osama Musalama, who got here from america, stated it used to be his first discuss with since ahead of the civil warfare that began in 2011.
“I misplaced hope that I might come again to Syria,” he stated. “We had been looking ahead to this second and misplaced hope, however thank God now the rustic is again to its other folks.”One after the other, Jordanian state-run Petra information company reported {that a} Royal Jordanian Airways aircraft departed for Damascus on a check flight. The pinnacle of Jordan’s Civil Aviation Regulatory Fee, Capt. Haitham Misto, who used to be on board the flight with a group of experts, stated that the purpose used to be to guage the technical situation of Damascus airport ahead of resuming common flights.
For the reason that lightning riot offensive that unseated Assad a month in the past, Arab and Western international locations that had bring to an end family members with the previous executive had been reopening diplomatic family members with Syria’s new de facto government, headed by means of the Islamist former rebel team Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS.
Syria’s new overseas minister, Asaad al-Shibani, has traveled to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in contemporary days. The Gulf international locations usually are key to investment Syria’s reconstruction after just about 14 years of civil warfare that preceded Assad’s ouster.
On Tuesday, al-Shibani traveled to Jordan to fulfill together with his counterpart in Amman. Jordan’s overseas ministry stated the officers had been set to speak about “mechanisms of cooperation in lots of spaces together with borders, safety, power, transportation, water, industry and different important sectors.”Underneath Assad’s rule, Jordan were a prime conduit for smuggling extremely addictive Captagon amphetamines produced in Syria into Gulf states, which used to be some extent of anxiety between the 2 international locations.Syria’s new government have made a display of cracking down at the Captagon industry, dismantling former factories in places together with the Mazzeh air base in Damascus, a automotive buying and selling corporate in Latakia and a manufacturing facility that after made snack chips within the Damascus suburb of Douma.“The brand new state of affairs in Syria has additionally ended the threats that in the past threatened the safety of the Kingdom (of Jordan), with reference to medication and Captagon, and we pledge that this factor has ended and won’t go back once more,” al-Shibani stated in a joint information convention with Jordanian International Minister Ayman al-Safadi.
Al-Safadi stated that his nation helps the Syrian other folks as they paintings to “rebuild their place of origin at the foundations that maintain its safety, steadiness, sovereignty and harmony and satisfy the rights of its other folks,” including that Jordan is “in a position to supply electrical energy to our brothers right away, and we also are in a position to paintings in combination to supply fuel.”Syria, centered by means of stringent Western sanctions, has been in a protracted financial disaster and Syrians obtain just a few hours of state-provided electrical energy according to day.___Omar Akour reported from Amman, Jordan. Abby Sewell contributed to this file from Beirut.
