BEIRUT: Hezbollah said it downed an Israeli drone in southern Lebanon on Monday in the latest flare-up raising tensions between the group and Israel.
The drone is now in Hezbollah’s possession, the group said in a statement.
The incident happened a week after Hezbollah and Israel exchanged cross-border fire marking their fiercest shelling exchange since the 2006 Lebanon war.
After last week’s clash the group’s leader said Hezbollah would shoot down Israeli drones in Lebanese airspace.
An Israeli military statement said one of its drones “fell inside southern Lebanon during routine operations”. It did not say why the drone crashed, but said “there is no concern information could be taken from it”. An Israeli military spokeswoman said it was a “simple drone” without elaborating.
Hezbollah said its fighters had used “appropriate weapons” to bring down the drone on the edge of the southern Lebanese town of Ramyah.
Reporting from the Israel-Lebanon border, a correspondent for Hezbollah’s Al Manar television said the drone had not sustained much damage, and had been in Lebanese airspace for around five minutes.
Israel also raised the stakes last week by accusing Hezbollah of setting up a factory for precision-guided missiles in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley.
Hezbollah has denied having production sites in Lebanon, but says it does possess precision-guided missiles. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose group fought a deadly month-long war with Israel in 2006, blamed Israel for the drone attack and has vowed to target Israeli drones entering Lebanon’s airspace.
Lebanon’s government has repeatedly complained to the United Nations about Israel breaching its airspace. — Reuters
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