Ash-Schaʿirat military airfield
| Ash-Schaʿirat military airfield | |||
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| Characteristics | |||
| Coordinates | |||
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| Distance from the city center | 32 km southeast of Homs , 125 km northeast of Damascus |
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| Basic data | |||
| operator | Syrian Air Force / Russian Air Force | ||
| Start-and runway | |||
| 11/29 | 3000 m × 45 m asphalt | ||
The military airfield ash-Scha'irat ( Arabic مطار الشعيرات العسكري, DMG Maṭār aš-Šaʿīrāt al-ʿaskarī ) is a military airfield in Syria .
The airfield is located southeast of Homs near asch-Schaʿirat and is one of the most important bases of the Syrian air force . It has a three-kilometer runway and 40 bunkered aircraft shelters . A three-kilometer taxiway can also be used as an emergency take-off and landing runway.
Since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011, the base has remained continuously under the control of government forces and was also used by the Russian aerospace forces as part of the Russian military operation .
Satellite imagery from 2015 indicated recent construction work on the base and helicopters operating from there. According to Stratfor , two squadrons of Sukhoi Su-22 and a squadron of MiG-23 were formerly stationed on the field, but most of their aircraft (as of 2015) had been decommissioned for a long time. Satellite images also show several groups of discarded or retired aircraft on the approximately 4.7 km long and 2.3 to 2.9 km wide airfield site.
Three days after the poison gas incident in Chan Schaichun the US attacked the airport on April 7, 2017, two warships in the eastern Mediterranean off with Tomahawk - cruise missiles and damaged it.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Shayrat airbase: One of the major strongholds of Assad's Air Force. In: tass.com. TASS , April 7, 2017, accessed April 14, 2017 .
- ^ Mapping the Targets of the American Military Attack on Syria. In: nytimes.com. The New York Times , April 7, 2017, accessed April 9, 2017 .
- ↑ Stratfor : Russia just sent additional advanced fighter jets to Syria. In: businessinsider.com. Business Insider , December 16, 2015, accessed April 14, 2017 .
- ↑ Photos from Google Earth dated 2003 and 2004 show several groups of aircraft parked on the site already in the same positions as in 2014: SW: five Mig-21s , SO: six Mig-21s , north runway: one Mig-21 19, four Su-22 . Retrieved April 14, 2017.