A false alarm triggered Syrian air defense missiles to be fired overnight, a commander in the regional military alliance that backs the Syrian government said Tuesday, reversing previous reports of a fresh attack on Syria.
Syrian state TV reported overnight that anti-aircraft defenses had intercepted missiles fired at an air base in the Homs area, and a media unit run by the Lebanese group Hezbollah said missiles had also targeted an air base near Damascus.
The commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity, attributed the malfunction to "a joint electronic attack" by Israel and the United States targeting the Syrian radar system.
Syrian state television had initially showed pictures of a missile it claimed was shot in the air above the air base, only days after a U.S., British and French attack on Syrian targets in retaliation for a suspected chemical attack on the city of Douma on the outskirts of Damascus.
The television reports did not mention any attacks on the Dumair military airport, northeast of Damascus, that Hezbollah's media service reported had been targeted.
Opposition sources say Dumair airport is a major air base used in a large-scale military campaign waged by the Syrian army with Russian firepower that regained eastern Ghouta, a rebel enclave on the outskirts of Damascus.
A Pentagon spokesman said there was no U.S. military activity in that area at this time.
Asked about the missile attack, an Israeli military spokesman said: "We don't comment on such reports."
Shayrat air base was targeted last year in a U.S. cruise missile attack in response to a chemical attack that killed at least 70 people, including children, on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun.
Israel has struck Syrian army locations multiple times in the course of the conflict, hitting convoys and bases of Iranian-backed militias that fight alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces.
Israel has long said Iran is expanding its influence in a belt of territory that stretches from the Iraqi border to the Lebanese border, where Israel says Iran supplies the Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah with arms.
Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias have a large military presence in Syria and are well entrenched in central and eastern areas near the Iraqi border.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah's second in command, Sheikh Naim Qassem, told pro-Syrian government television channel Al Mayadeen that he expected Tehran to retaliate for the deaths of at least seven Iranian military personnel during a missile strike earlier this month on the T4 airfield near Homs, which Iran blamed on Israel.
On Monday, The New York Times cited an Israeli defense official as confirming that it was the Israeli Air Force that bombed the T4 air base in Homs, Syria, last week.
"The deliberate Israeli slaying of Iranians in the T4 base will have a response but we don't know its nature or its details," Qassem said in the television interview.
The heavily armed Hezbollah has been a vital military ally of Assad in the seven-year Syrian war.
Hezbollah, which last fought a major war with Israel in 2006, has said it would not open a new front against the Jewish state from Lebanon.
Qassem said his organization was not fighting in all the main battles in Syria but was present in any area that was needed. He did not elaborate.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said after the U.S., British, and French strikes in Syria that his country will continue "to move against Iran in Syria."
