At least three people were killed in an overnight airstrike on the T4 airport outside Homs, Syria, reports in the Syria media claimed Wednesday.
According to a London-based watchdog identified with the Syrian opposition, three members of pro-Iranian militias were killed in the strike. However, that report referred to "foreign aircraft" and did not attribute the strike to Israel.
The report also said the number of casualties was expected to rise, as the strike had apparently left many wounded and there were unconfirmed reports of more dead.
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On Tuesday night, Syria's air defenses intercepted an aerial "aggression" from Israel that targeted an airbase in the country's center, a Syrian military official told state-run media outlet SANA.
The official quoted by SANA said the attack targeted the T4 air base in Homs province shortly after 10 p.m. local time. The official said the attack only caused material damage to the base, saying most rockets were intercepted while only four landed in the targeted area.
"The Israeli air force conducted new aerial aggression and immediately our air defenses confronted the enemy missiles," an army statement said.
The Syrian army statement said the Israeli jets flew from Tanf, to the southeast, where the US has set up a base near the Iraqi-Jordanian border.
Tanf lies on the strategic Damascus-Baghdad highway, a major supply route for Iranian weapons into Syria. This makes the base a bulwark against Iran and part of a larger US campaign against Iranian influence in Iraq and Syria.
There was no immediate Israeli comment. Israel has carried out dozens of airstrikes in Syria over the past years but it rarely comments on what it targets.
According to foreign reports, Israel is behind airstrikes mainly targeting Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria that have joined the country's fighting alongside the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Israel in the past has said Iran uses the T4 base to transfer weapons to Hezbollah. Western intelligence sources say it has also been used as a base for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
The attack on Tuesday comes during heightened tension after the recent escalation between the US and Iran, Damascus' main ally in the region. A US airstrike in Baghdad killed Iran's top general earlier in January. General Qassim Soleimani was the main architect of Iran's policy in Syria, where thousands of allied fighters fought alongside Assad's forces in the country's civil war.
Russia announced late last year that it had delivered the S-300 air defense system to Syria. Russia, too, is a key ally of Assad, and its intervention in the civil war, beginning in 2015, turned the tide in his favor.
