Update: Flights from Germany, Sweden land in Syria's Damascus for first time in years

The first commercial flight originating from Germany landed in Syria's capital on Tuesday despite years of European Union sanctions on the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Greek airliner Air Mediterranean flew from Düsseldorf Airport to Damascus International Airport, after announcing earlier this year that it would begin operating flights to Syria via Athens.

Another flight on the same airline also travelled to Damascus from Sweden.

According to data from the flight tracker website FlightRadar24, the roundtrip from Damascus to Düsseldorf via Athens was completed on Saturday 24 June. The return flight left the Syrian capital at 2:10 a.m. local time.

There will be weekly flights every Saturday from Düsseldorf to Damascus, the company announced with cut-price tickets for the summer season.

However, no German airlines fly to Syria, and Berlin still has no ties with the Assad regime.

According to the same tracker, a second roundtrip from Damascus to Stockholm was concluded early on the morning of Thursday 29 June

The Greek airliner Air Mediterranean has been flying to Syria for a few months now, and on Tuesday it operated its first flight from Dusseldorf in Germany to Damascus.

International flights have been increasingly arriving in regime-controlled areas of Syria after 12 years of war, including from Iraq and the UAE.

This follows growing normalisation between the Syrian regime and Arab states, which have re-established ties with the Assad regime after cutting them off following a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 2011.

Damascus and Aleppo airports have been closed several times due to Israeli airstrikes which reportedly targeted pro-Iranian militias active there.

The conflict in Syria has killed more than half a million people, displaced millions and has left much of the country’s infrastructure in ruins, mostly due to regime bombing and shelling.