Arbil, Iraq: Flights to and from two northern Iraqi airports were suspended for 48 hours for the second time in roughly two weeks due to Russian strikes in Syria, officials said on Monday.

The directors of the Arbil and Sulaimaniyah airports in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region both said that flights had been suspended due to danger posed by Russian cruise missiles heading to Syria.

Flights to the two airports were also suspended for 48 hours beginning on 23 November for the same reason.

And flights in and out of Lebanon were rerouted and some airlines cancelled services after Moscow requested they avoid an area over the eastern Mediterranean a few days before that.

Russia began carrying out strikes in Syria on 30 September in support of its longstanding ally President Bashar al-Assad.

In its bombing campaign, Moscow has fired cruise missiles from warships in the Caspian Sea that passed over northern Iraq en route to their targets in Syria.

A US-led coalition is also carrying out strikes against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, where the jihadists have declared a cross-border ‘caliphate’ spanning territory it controls in the two countries.