A stray missile has exploded in midair over villages in northern Cyprus, thought to have been fired by Syrian forces in response to an Israeli attack.

Authorities in the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus said the missile sparked blazes in surrounding hills after its remnants landed early on Monday, barely 12 miles north-east of Nicosia, the capital.

There were reports the explosion could be heard on either side of the island’s divided and densely populated capital. Residents in the area reported seeing a light in the sky before hearing three loud blasts. Some homes were evacuated in the foothills of the mountain range.

No one was hurt in the freak incident. But hours after the projectile struck the area at about 1am local time (2300 BST) debris was still being discovered in Turkish Cypriot villages.

One resident who uploaded a picture on social media of a part of the suspected missile found in the village of Kornokypos – following the earlier discovery of two other parts in two other villages – described it as a “Russian rocket”, the Cyprus Mail reported.

A Greek Cypriot military analyst, Andreas Pentaras, said markings suggested it was a Russian-made S-200 surface-to-air missile, which can have a range of up to 250 miles (400km). Jamming technology could have diverted the missile, believed to have been fired from an air defence system in Syria in response to an attack by Israel. An Israeli airstrike was under way at the time, according to Syrian state media.

“An assessment from the pictures made public shows the base of its wings,” Pentaras, a retired army general, told Sigma, a television channel in southern Cyprus. “It has Russian writing on it, so it suggests it is Russian-made. Syria uses Russian-made missiles, so a not-so-safe assessment would be it was ... an S-200 [missile].”

The breakaway Turkish Cypriot republic’s president, Mustafa Akıncı, also linked the incident to military operations in the Middle East. “This is one of the bad consequences of the war in Syria,” he said.

The European Union’s most easterly member, Cyprus is less than 200 miles from Syria. On some days the Syrian coast can be seen from the island’s north.

It would be the first time Cyprus has been caught up in military operations in Syria’s civil war.

In a social media post the Turkish Cypriot foreign minister, Kudret Özersay, said he thought the explosion occurred before impact because of the lack of craters on the ground. “The pieces that fell to several different points prove that the missile exploded in the air before it crashed,” he wrote.

Another analyst in the Greek south suggested that if the projectile was ultimately proved to be a missile it could have been faulty. S-200 missiles were designed to explode in midair if they did not hit a target, Zenonas Tziarras from Geopolitical, a Cyprus thinktank, told Reuters. “Right now we can’t be absolute but from the pictures it appears to be an S-200,” he said.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974 when an Athens-inspired coup aimed at union with Greece prompted Turkey to invade, seizing the island’s northern third. The self-proclaimed state is recognised only by Ankara.