News / Palestine

Hamas targets Israeli warplanes after resistance group’s drone shot down over Gaza Strip

Monday, 03 April 2023 1:16 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 03 April 2023 1:30 PM ]

In this file picture, members of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas resistance movement, take part in a military parade in the city of Khan Yunis, the Gaza Strip. (Photo by Anadolu news agency)

The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement says it has fired a number of surface-to-air missiles towards Israeli fighter jets flying over the Gaza Strip after an unmanned aerial vehicle belonging to the group was shot down.

The al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, announced in a Monday statement that one of its Shehab (Meteor) drones, while on a training flight, was shot down by Israel's air force earlier the same day.

It noted that the incident occurred as members of the al-Qassam Brigades were conducting training in the southern Gaza Strip.

After Israeli fighter jets targeted the drone, the Brigades responded by firing anti-aircraft missiles towards the Israeli planes.

No Israeli aircraft were apparently damaged in the incident.

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The Israeli military said the Hamas drone was spotted in the airspace over the besieged coastal enclave, and was monitored up until the moment it was shot down.

The regime's army added that the aircraft did not enter Israeli airspace and did not pose a threat.

This came a day after Israeli combat helicopters and planes downed an unidentified aircraft that appeared to have crossed into Israeli airspace from Syria's Golan.

The unidentified aircraft was tracked by the Israeli military and “taken down over an open area,” without posing a threat to residents of the area, the regime's army said in a statement on Sunday.

The remnants of that drone were collected by the army on Monday morning and transferred for additional checks.

Tensions in northern Israel have escalated after a series of airstrikes in Syria.

Israel launched air raids on outposts in Syria’s central province of Homs early on Sunday, wounding at least five soldiers, according to the Syrian Ministry of Defense.

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The raids were the third in recent days, including an attack on Friday that killed two military advisers with Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

Israel launched “an aerial aggression from the direction of northwest Beirut, targeting some outposts in Homs city and its countryside at 00:35 a.m. local time on Sunday (2135 GMT Saturday) and Syrian air defenses had intercepted some of the missiles,” the ministry said in a statement carried by Syria’s official news agency SANA.

An unnamed Syrian military source said that the attacks caused some material damage and injured five military personnel.

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