Iran shot down a drone belonging to a foreign country on Friday, state news agency IRNA reported an official as saying. “The downed drone definitely belonged to a foreign country. Its wreckage has been recovered and is being investigated,” the governor of Iran’s southern Khuzestan province, Gholamreza Shariati, said.
Iranian media had reported earlier that the army had shot down a drone over the Gulf port city of Mahshahr in Khuzestan province. The semi-official Tasnim news agency said the drone had been downed while over Iran’s airspace “with the army’s domestically made Mersad surface-to-air missile.” It was not immediately clear whether it was a military or civilian drone, or from which country it came.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the incident, Reuters said.
In June, Iran shot down an unmanned US surveillance drone, which, its Revolutionary Guards said, had been flying over southern Iran. Washington said the US drone had actually been shot down by Iran while in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.