News / Lebanon

Israeli spy drone crashes in southern Lebanon: Report

Saturday, 31 March 2018 9:02 AM [ Last Update: Saturday, 31 March 2018 1:05 PM ]

The picture circulated on social media shows the wreckage of an Israeli drone that crashed in southern Lebanon on March 31, 2018.

An Israeli spy drone has reportedly crashed in southern Lebanon as the Tel Aviv regime defies calls to end its violations of the Lebanese airspace.

Lebanon’s al-Manar television network reported that the “unmanned Israeli spy plane” had went down between the villages of Beit Yahoun and Bara’achit overnight between Friday and Saturday.

The Israeli army also confirmed the incident, with its spokesperson saying in a statement that the drone had crashed in an open field in southern Lebanon as result of a technical malfunction.

“The incident is currently being reviewed. There is no risk of leaked information,” the statement read.

Meanwhile, a security source said the Lebanese Army Engineering Corps had found four rockets inside the wreckage of the Israeli plane and would proceed to detonate them.

The Israeli regime has been violating Lebanese airspace on an almost daily basis, carrying out what it calls “routine reconnaissance missions.”

The latest incident comes amid rising Israeli threats of a new war against Lebanon. The regime launched two wars on Lebanon in 2000 and 2006, in both of which the Hezbollah resistance movement inflicted heavy losses on the regime’s military.

Beirut has filed several complaints with the UN against Israeli violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty by land, sea and air in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which brokered a ceasefire in Israel’s 2006 war and calls on Tel Aviv to respect Lebanese sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Over the past years, the regime has carried out frequent airstrikes on Syria from the Lebanese airspace.

In the latest such strikes, Syria’s air defense systems in February downed at least one Israeli F-16 fighter jet, in what Hezbollah called the “start of a new strategic phase” which would limit Israeli violations of the Syrian airspace.

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