The unidentified aircraft that was shot down by Israeli forces as it was flying over a portion of the country appeared to be made in Iran, it was reported Monday.
“This drone was spotted over the Mediterranean in a sector near the Gaza Strip before entering Israeli airspace, where the air force followed it,” military spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovich said, according to Al Arabiya.
The drone was shot down around 20 miles away from the Dimona nuclear reactor.
“It was followed from the beginning until the time it was decided to intercept it and shoot it down for operational reasons over the Yatir Forest in the northern Negev, an uninhabited region,” Leibovich said.
The Ynet news website reported that Hezbollah or possibly Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon used the drone to test its operational capabilities and Israel’s air defense.
Jamaluddin Aberoumand, an Iranian general with the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, told the semi-official Fars News Agency on Monday that the drone flying over the Mount Hebron area of Israel shows that the country’s Iron Dome missile defense is inefficient.
The fact that the drone flew 60 miles into Israeli territory shows there are “abundant weaknesses,” he told the news agency, without confirming that Iran or Hezbollah conducted the drone flight.
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