Security Official: Drone Downed in Israel Was not Sent from Lebanon

A Lebanese security official denied on Monday that a drone downed by the Israeli air force off the northern coast of Israel had been sent from Lebanon.

The official, who was not identified, told An Nahar newspaper that Israel rushed to the conclusion that Hizbullah was behind the unmanned aircraft (UAV) that the Israeli military said was intercepted five nautical miles off the coast of Haifa last Thursday.

UNIFIL's naval contingent is heavily deployed at sea and in Lebanon's territorial waters and could have seen any movement if the drone was sent from Lebanon, the official said.

He suggested that it could have been sent by an Israeli amateur from his country's coast or Hamas could have been behind it.

The incident, which was the second in less than seven months, was denied by Hizbullah.

The party's leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah confirmed in October that Hizbullah had sent an Iranian-built drone into Israeli airspace and claimed it had overflown sensitive sites in Israel.

Warplanes shot down on October 7 the unarmed drone over Israel's southern Negev desert after it entered the country's airspace from the Mediterranean Sea.