Netanyahu Openly Accuses Hizbullah of Sending Drone over Israel

Hizbullah was behind the drone that Israel shot down last weekend, Israeli Prime Minister Binjamin Netanyahu charged on Thursday during a tour of the security fence separating southern Israel from Egypt.

During the tour, Netanyahu stated that Israel would "act with determination to defend its sea, air and land borders" just as it had "thwarted Hizbullah's attempt over the weekend" to send an unmanned aircraft into Israeli airspace.

Hizbullah's al-Manar television announced Wednesday that the party's secretary-general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah will make a televised appearance on Thursday evening to discuss the issue of the drone among other topics.

Israeli officials announced on Saturday that a drone was shot down by Israel after it entered the country's airspace. A military official told the Israeli public radio that Hizbullah may be behind dispatching the drone.

The Ynet news website said without quoting sources that "Hizbullah launched this drone. It is even possible that Iranians activated its launch and guidance system, and it is apparently of Iranian manufacture."

Ynet added: "The launching of such a craft over such a distance requires advanced means that Hizbullah does not possess up to now."

In July 2006, the Israeli military shot down an unarmed drone operated by Hizbullah over the Jewish state's territorial waters.

And on April 12, 2005, another pilotless Hizbullah aircraft succeeded in overflying part of northern Israel without being downed.

"An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was identified penetrating Israeli airspace this morning, and was intercepted by the IAF at approximately 10:00 am (0800 GMT)," a military spokesman said on Saturday.

Soldiers were searching the area where the drone was downed, in open areas in the northern Negev, to locate and identify it, the spokesman added.

Army radio said that the aircraft was not carrying explosives.

It quoted a military spokesman as saying troops responsible for monitoring "acted as they should have done after spotting the drone following its intrusion into Israeli airspace."

Military spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovich later told reporters: "This drone was spotted over the Mediterranean in a sector near the Gaza Strip before entering Israeli airspace, where the air force followed it."

"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 called the operation a "success", but she did not say how the drone was shot down.

On Wednesday army radio and the top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily said the air force had only managed to shoot down the drone on the second attempt.

Both reports said that the first missile fired by the F-16 jet missed the drone which was eventually brought by a Panther missile, the military's most advanced air-to-air projectile.

A senior air force source quoted by Yediot played down the incident saying it was not unreasonable given the drone's small size.

"This is not a failure, no other army in the world with Israel's aerial defense systems could prevent the infiltration of such aircraft," he said.