Israel destroys own drone after mistakenly suspecting it came from Lebanon

Israel shot down its own drone, thinking it had come from Lebanon.

2 min read

08 August, 2020

Tension runs between Israel and Lebanon [Getty]

The Israeli army announced that it shot down its own drone, thinking it came from Lebanon.

The army on Friday said it had shot an overnight drone near Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights and that it was investigating the incident.

Soon after, warning sirens sounded in around the Galilee, near Israel's border with Lebanon. No rockets were fired at Israel, the army said, according to Haaretz.

In a statement, the Israeli army said the sirens were activated over an assumed intrusion into Israeli territory by a drone, which later turned out to be false.

At the time, the army's statement said that troops were on "elevated preparedness in the north and will not tolerate any violation of Israeli sovereignty".

This comes as tensions between Lebanon based group Hezbollah and Israel, as Israel fears the Lebanese group would react to last month's killing of one of their fighters in an airstrike in Syria.

Israel's army has reinforced its northern frontiers with Lebanon and Syria in recent weeks, so as to ready itself for "diverse" potential enemy actions.

The Jewish state late last month said it had repelled an attempt by Hezbollah fighters to penetrate the border, but the Shiite Lebanese group denied any involvement in the incident.

That border clash came a week after an alleged Israeli missile attack hit positions of Syrian regime forces and their allies south of Damascus, killing five.

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