Nine people were reportedly killed in an Israeli missile strike on the T4 air base in Syria's Homs province overnight Sunday, media outlets in Syria said.
The reported victims were not identified, but according to Syrian media, the base is manned by Iranian forces in addition to Syrian troops.
The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said the missile attack on Sunday caused only material damage, no casualties.
"Our air defense systems thwarted an Israeli aggression and brought down a number of missiles that were targeting the T4 airport," a Syrian military source told state media.
The air defenses hit one of the "attacking planes and forced the rest to leave" Syria's airspace, the source added.
Six missiles were used in the attack, according to the Syrian report.
The Britain-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the missiles targeted Iranian troops and non-Syrian pro-Iranian fighters.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said Israel does not comment on foreign reports.
Israel has grown increasingly alarmed by the expanding reach of its archenemy, Iran, in neighboring Syria, over the course of the seven-year war there. Israel's air force has struck dozens of targets it describes as Iranian deployments or arms transfers to Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group.
Damascus and its allies Iran and Russia accused Israel of carrying out an attack on the same air base in Homs on April 9, an attack that killed seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps members. Tehran vowed at the time to respond.
The attack comes amid a Syrian government offensive against insurgent groups near the Israeli border. Russia and Iran have provided crucial military support to Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces, helping them turn the tide in Assad's favor in the ongoing civil war.
