| Twitter got there first, as usual. |
kaboom!early Sunday in a
Hizbullah...
Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as
The Resistanceand purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory...
stronghold in Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hizbullah official told the AFP news agency.
The incident came hours after Israel launched air strikes in neighboring Syria but the official could not confirm if the drones were Israeli or if they had been shot down by Hizbullah.
Lebanese security forces cordoned off the area in the Moawwad neighborhood, a few dozen meters from a Hizbullah media center, as residents gathered, and where forces from Hizbullah were also present.
"There were two drones -- the first fell and was neutralized, the second went
kaboom!," a Hizbullah official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Leb and Israel are technically still at war, and Leb regularly accuses Israel of violating its airspace with planes and drones.
Israel has fought several conflicts against Hizbullah, the last in 2006.
In recent years those hostilities have spilled over into Syria, where the group -- like Iran, another long-time enemy of Israel -- is fighting on the side of the regime of Bashir al-Assad.
| All very straightforward, but then there’s this from The Times of Israel, which would explain earlier tweets about Iron Dome set up in northern Israel and Israeli squadrons on high alert: |
| The Times of Israel has a brief video at the link, but I’m not sure it conveys any useful information. |
In a briefing to news hounds early Sunday, military front man Jonathan Conricus said the Israeli air force "was able to thwart an Iranian attempt led by the Quds force from Syria to conduct an attack on Israeli targets in northern Israel using killer drones."
A Syrian military source quoted by the official Sana news agency said anti-aircraft defences had "detected enemy targets from Golan heading towards the area around Damascus."
"The aggression was immediately confronted and so far the majority of the enemy Israeli missiles have been destroyed before reaching their targets," the source added.
Since the beginning of the war in Syria in 2011, Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes in Syria, most of them against what it says are Iranian and Hizbullah targe
They said they heard an aircraft flying just before the blast and reported later that the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group sealed off the area. The blast occurred near the group’s media office in the Moawwad district.
Journalists on the scene were not allowed to film or take pictures. One building appeared to be slightly damaged where the drone went down. A man was seen taking away metal parts in a white plastic bag that he said contained parts of the aircraft that went down.
The Israeli military said it does not comment on “foreign reports.”
Israeli warplanes fly over Lebanon regularly and have struck inside neighboring Syria from Lebanese airspace on numerous occasions. Israel also uses drones to monitor Hezbollah activity in southern Lebanon, according to Beirut.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was holding an emergency meeting with defense officials overnight amid the heightened tensions.