Israel says it has shot down a Hezbollah drone about 5 miles west of Haifa, a northern coastal city, according to Reuters and AP and the IDF’s Twitter feed:
A short time ago, a UAV attempted to infiltrate Israeli airspace from the north. The craft was intercepted. RT twitter.com/IDFSpokesperso…
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) April 25, 2013
The Times of Israel reports:
The plane was identified while still in Lebanon and IDF fighter jets were immediately scrambled to track it. Once it became clear that the drone was not an IDF or civilian aircraft, a decision was made to intercept the drone. It was shot down by an F-16C fighter jet some five miles off the Haifa coast at 6,000 feet in the air, the IDF said.
Israel previously downed a Hezbollah drone, last October, over the Negev desert in the south of the nation.
Here’s a photo of the successful October operation, via Times of Israel:
