Syria: Media, monitoring group report missile strike after 'chemical attack'

Just when the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria was facing flak over allegations of using chemical weapons in Douma to get rid of the rebels completely, the country's state-run media said missile attack at an airbase in central Syria early on Monday, April 9, killed many. The dead included Iranians as well said a war monitoring group, which gave the figure as 14.

The SANA news agency suspected the US behind the attacks, the latter denied it. Neither the Israeli military, which has also carried out attacks in Syria in recent times, react on the reported missile attack although a TV station of Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah group said the attack was an Israeli aggression.

The attack came just a couple of days after a suspected poison gas attack in the eastern suburbs of Damascus that have remained the last foothold of the Syrian rebels. Seventy people were reportedly killed in the attack which has led to an international outrage.

The state news agency said the missile attack took place on the T4 airbase in Homs province and it killed a number of people thought it did not give any specific figure. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights in Britain which monitors the war through a ground network said the death tally was 14 and the victims included Iranians.

US President Donald Trump had warned about a "big price to pay" for the suspected poison gas attack but the Pentagon said after the missile strike in Syria that the Department of Defence wasn't conducting any such act in the West Asian country at that moment.

A year ago, Washington had launched several dozens of Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian airbase after a chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in northern Syria killed several people.