Syrian military air defenses shot down missiles targeting the T4 air base in Homs province in an act of “aggression” attributed to Israel, Syrian state media said citing a military source.
“Our air defense systems thwarted an Israeli aggression and brought down a number of missiles that were targeting the T4 airport,” it cited the military source as saying.
The air defenses hit one of the “attacking planes and forced the rest to leave” Syria’s air space, it added
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Damascus, as well as its allies Iran and Russia, blamed Israel for an April 9 air strike on the same Homs base, an attack that killed seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) members. Tehran vowed at the time to respond.
Israel has grown deeply alarmed by the expanding clout of its arch enemy Iran during the seven-year war in neighboring Syria. Israel’s air force has struck scores of targets it described as Iranian deployments or arms transfers to Iran-backed Hezbollah.
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An army officer in the southern Syrian desert said the defense system brought down missiles coming from south of the Tanf region towards the Homs air base.
U.S. Central Command spokesman Captain Bill Urban said that neither U.S. nor coalition forces carried out strikes in that area.