Israel's Ben Gurion Airport cancels 25 incoming flights

By Mohamed Khbesa

JERUSALEM (AA) – Israel’s Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday canceled 25 international flights expected to arrive Monday after the airport became a target of rockets fired by Palestinian resistance groups.

According the flight schedule on its website, there were 47 flights scheduled to arrive at the airport, some 45 km northwest of Jerusalem, on Monday.

The remaining 22 flights are still unconfirmed and their times will be decided in the next hours.

It is the third time that the Palestinian resistance's rockets reached the vicinity of Ben Gurion Airport. The last of them was on Saturday evening in response to the Israeli aggression on Gaza, Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

The canceled flights were scheduled to depart from the cities of Istanbul, Munich, Odessa, Dubai, Athens, Sofia, Tbilisi, Zurich, New York, Warsaw, Vienna, Bucharest, Kyiv, Chicago, London, and San Francisco.

Meanwhile, at least 20 flights scheduled to arrive in Israel on Sunday via Ben Gurion Airport were canceled.

On Thursday, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, Lufthansa, and Austrian Airlines changed their flight schedule before Etihad Airways and Fly Dubai did the same on Saturday.

Israeli warplanes carried out heavy airstrikes on a residential area in Gaza City at dawn on Sunday, leaving at least 42 Palestinians killed, most of them women and children.

At least 192 Palestinians, including 58 children and 34 women, have been killed and 1,235 injured since May 10 when Tel Aviv launched the offensive.

*Bassel Barakat contributed to this report from Ankara.