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Israel fires missiles at Syrian drone
[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Israel on Sunday fired missiles towards an unmanned drone that entered Israeli-controlled airspace from Syria and it turned back, the military said in a statement."Two Patriot air defense missiles were fired towards a drone which infiltrated Israeli airspace in the central Golan Heights. The drone returned to Syria," the Israeli army said. A military spokeswoman said there were no known casualties. Israel has often responded to errant mortar fire from the civil war in neighboring Syria on the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights with tank and mortar shells and with air strikes, but the use of Patriot anti-aircraft interceptor missiles is unusual. A Syrian rebel source in the area said the Syrian army had launched a rare air raid on al-Shajara village along the Jordanian border. The village, which is also close to the Israeli frontier, is held by the Shuhada al-Yarmouk group, who are thought to be ISIS affiliates. Though formally neutral on the civil war, Israel has frequently pledged to prevent shipments of advanced weaponry to Leb’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah group, whose fighters have been allied with Syrian  Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad Scourge of Qusayr... Two months ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had launched dozens of strikes in Syria. The Golan Heights is a strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East, and annexed in a move that has not won international recognition. Hezbollah says it sent drone to Israel, back safely [IsraelTimes] Hezbollah-linked Lebanese fighter Anes al-Naqqash says in a tweet the drone shot at by Israel was sent by the Shiite terror group. Naqqash says the drone had just begun photographing army maneuvers in the Golan when it was shot at and turned back, in a tweet flagged by Yossi Mansharof, an expert from the Ezri Center at the University of Haifa, who tracks Hezbollah movement. Naqqash says the drone returned safely. Posted by: Fred 2016-07-18 |
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