Qatar Airways made the first international commercial flight to Damascus since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.View on euronews

Could the return of Qatar Airways to Damascus tempt other international airlines to put the Syrian capital back on the route map?

The first international commercial flight since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad has landed at the Damascus airport arriving from Qatar.

The national airline of Qatar has announced that it will resume weekly flights to Syria 13 years after cancelling operations. Qatar Airways will offer three weekly flights between Qatar and Damascus, Syria, from Tuesday (7 January). In 2011, flights by the carrier to and from Damascus and Aleppo were cancelled amid Syria’s civil war.

Qatar Airways is to restart flights to Syria after an absence of more than a decade, which began in 2011 due to the breakout of a devastating civil war.

The first Qatari commercial flight in nearly 13 years landed in Damascus on Tuesday, AFP correspondents said, as international traffic resumed at Syria's main airport nearly a month after rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad.

Qatar was the second country, after Turkey, to reopen its embassy in the Syrian capital following the overthrow of the Assad government