Israel is accused of drone bombing
BEIRUT // Israel carried out an airstrike in a remote area of Lebanon’s western Bekaa region yesterday, Al Manar television, run by Hizbollah, reported.
The TV station said the attack was carried out to destroy a downed Israeli drone.
Images published by Lebanese media purported to show the mangled remains of the drone.
Lebanon’s official National News Agency said its armed forces were investigating at the site of the incident.
An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment when asked about the explosion.
A Lebanese security source said that the cause of the blast in a mountainous area near the town of Saghbein was “still not 100 per cent clear but most probably it was an Israeli airstrike to destroy their drone”.
It was not clear if there were casualties in the incident.
Last year, Israel remotely detonated a spying device that was planted near a main road in south Lebanon after the device had been discovered Hizbollah. A member of Hizbollah was killed in the blast and the group responded by detonating a bomb on Lebanon’s border with Israel.
Two Israeli soldiers were wounded.
Israel has carried out several airstrikes in neighbouring Syria since the start of the four-year civil war there, mostly destroying weaponry that Israeli officials said were destined for Hizbollah.
Observers and Lebanese residents have sometimes seen surveillance planes over Lebanon before such strikes.
Israel fought a bloody 34-day war with Lebanon’s Shiite militia Hizbollah in 2006.
During that time more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed in Lebanon and some 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers, were also killed.
Earlier this year, an Israeli helicopter strike in Syria killed several Hizbollah members and an Iranian general.
The group hit back days later with a rocket attack that killed two Israeli soldiers on the frontier with Lebanon.
Israel occupied parts of Lebanon for 22 years until 2000 and the two countries are still technically at war.
Israeli warplanes and drones regularly enter Lebanese airspace.