Israel shoots down drone over Syrian frontier

World Tuesday 19/September/2017 21:30 PM
By: Times News Service
Israel shoots down drone over Syrian frontier

Occupied Jerusalem: Israel shot down a pilotless plane over the Golan Heights on Tuesday and said it was probably on a reconnaissance mission for Hezbollah along Israel's frontier with Syria.
The incident came hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to address the U.N. General Assembly.
The drone was launched from an air base near Damascus and was downed with a Patriot interceptor missile over the Golan demilitarised zone that has separated Israeli and Syrian forces since the 1973 Middle East war, the military said.
"As we understand, it was on a reconnaissance mission along the border and the Golan Heights on behalf of Hezbollah," a military spokesman, Lieutenant-Colonel Jonathan Conricus, told reporters.
Asked whether the drone might have been armed, Conricus said that information was not yet available.
He said Israeli warplanes had also been scrambled.
Officials from Syria, Hezbollah and Iran had no immediate comment on the incident.
The Golan, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 conflict, has seen spillover violence from the Syrian civil war.
Israel has at times fired to foil what it deemed deliberate cross-border attacks.