A drone downed by the Israel Defense Forces earlier this week was launched by Iran and was armed with explosives, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday.
Until now, the IDF has largely remained mum on the incident, in which the UAV was brought down as it approached Israeli airspace near the city of Beit She’an in the predawn hours of Tuesday morning.
According to Netanyahu, the drone was made by Iran and launched by Iranian forces toward Israel from either Syria or Iraq.
“Iran sent an armed drone to Israel from Iraq or Syria. Iranian forces launched the armed drone, which our forces intercepted on the border between Israel and Jordan,” Netanyahu said, speaking at a press conference alongside German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas.
It would be the second time Iran has sent armed UAVs into Israel. In a similar case in 2018, a drone was flown from Syria into northern Israel before it was shot down by an Israeli helicopter. In response, the IDF launched a wave of strikes on Iranian assets in Syria.
Netanyahu accused Iran of providing support and technical assistance to terror groups throughout the Middle East, including the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which receives most of its funding from Tehran, as well as Hamas, which also gets weapons and other help from the Islamic Republic.
“They provide the scaffolding on which these organizations really work,” Netanyahu said.
Tuesday’s airspace breach came amid ongoing fighting between Israel and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip.
At roughly 4 a.m. on Tuesday, the Israeli Air Force downed the drone as it approached the Israeli border from Jordan.
“The UAV was being monitored by IDF air control units. The fragments of the UAV were collected by security forces,” the military said.
Source » iranbriefing