BEIRUT: Iran-backed Hezbollah said it downed an Israeli drone in southern Lebanon early on Monday, a week after the group’s leader said it would shoot down Israeli drones in Lebanese airspace.
The drone is now in Hezbollah’s possession, the group said in a statement.
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.
A correspondent for Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television reporting from the border said the drone had not sustained much damage, and had been in Lebanese airspace for around five minutes.
A week ago, after a drone attack in a Hezbollah-controlled Beirut suburb, Hezbollah and the Israeli army exchanged cross-border fire that marked their fiercest shelling exchange since the 2006 Lebanon war.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, as well as Lebanon’s government, blamed Israel for the drone attack and had vowed to target Israeli drones entering Lebanon’s airspace.
Nasrallah said while last Sunday’s flare-up with Israel at the border was over, the episode had launched a “new phase” in which the Iran-backed group no longer had red lines it would not cross.
In that brief exchange of fire, Hezbollah said it destroyed an Israeli armored vehicle, killing and wounding those inside, and broadcast what it said was footage of two missiles hitting a moving vehicle.
Israel said it had faked soldier casualties to dampen any inclination of Hezbollah to escalate hostilities.
Nasrallah said the attack marked the first such operation by Hezbollah in a long time, targeting positions inside Israel itself and not just inside the Israeli-occupied Shebaa farms, which Lebanon says belongs to Lebanon.
Amid rising tensions in the region, Israel also raised the stakes last week by accusing Hezbollah, with Iranian assistance, 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.
Last week’s drone attacks and cross-border shelling came after Hezbollah, whose forces have fought in support of President Bashar Assad in Syria’s war, said two of its men were killed in an Israeli strike in Syria late last month.
Israel said its attack in Syria thwarted an Iran-led drone strike against it.
A Reuters witness at the Lebanese border near where the drone fell said the area was calm on Monday morning.
Any new war between Israel and Hezbollah would raise the risk of a wider conflict in the Middle East, at a time when Iran is defying US attempts to force it to renegotiate a 2015 nuclear deal it reached with world powers.
Israel is alarmed by Iran’s growing influence in the region through militia allies in countries including Syria and Iraq.
