Israeli Surveillance Drone Crashes in Aita al-Shaab

A small Israeli surveillance drone of the SkyLark type crashed Monday in the southern Lebanese border town of Aita al-Shaab, Lebanon's National News Agency said.

The drone crashed near the U.N.-demarcated Blue Line on the Lebanese-Israeli border, NNA said.

Israeli forces went on alert along the border in the wake of the incident as Israeli warplanes overflew the region, the agency added.

Hizbullah-affiliated media reportedly took photographs of the drone before Lebanese authorities confiscated it for further inspection.

The Israeli army meanwhile confirmed that a small Israeli military drone crashed in southern Lebanon on Monday afternoon.

“The incident is being investigated,” the Times of Israel news portal quoted a military spokesperson as saying.

“There did not appear to be a risk that classified information could be retrieved from the device,” the Israeli army said.

According to the Times of Israel, it was the fourth time this year that an Israeli SkyLark drone crashed. Earlier this month, a senior Israeli army official told The Times of Israel that the incidents were not the result of a shared problem, but were caused by a mix of human and technical errors.

In March, two SkyLark drones crashed, one in southern Syria and the other in the northern Gaza Strip.

In January, a SkyLark drone crashed in southern Lebanon, prompting a mad dash by Israeli forces to recover the aircraft. The next day, Hizbullah reported that it had retrieved pieces of the destroyed drone.

In August 2015, Hamas claimed it had captured an Israeli SkyLark drone in the Gaza Strip and reassembled it.