NOVANEWS
The drone did not carry explosives and likely had been dispatched on an intelligence- gathering mission, as well as to test Israel’s air defenses.
F-16I fighter jets were scrambled from the Ramon Air Base in the Negev immediately after the UAV was sighted. The pilots received instructions to trail it for a while before being told to blow it out of the sky for safety reasons. At 10 a.m., one of the fighters fired a missile, directly striking the drone and sending down burning debris.
Israeli sources also reported that the drone was first spotted above the Mediterranean near the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip to the west of Israel, as said military spokeswoman Avital Leibovich. An Israeli warplane shot it down above a forest near the occupied West Bank.
Hezbollah quickly emerged as the leading suspect because it has an arsenal of sophisticated Iranian weapons and a history of trying to deploy similar aircraft [3]. Although no official details were reveled but ‘Israeli parliament member Miri Regev, a former chief spokesman of the military, wrote on Twitter it was an “Iranian drone launched by Hezbollah”, referring to the Lebanese Shi’ite group that fought a war with Israel in 2006.’[2]
Jamaluddin Aberoumand, deputy coordinator for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said the incident indicated that Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile defense system “does not work and lacks the necessary capacity”, Fars news agency reported[2].
