The Israeli Ministry of War announced a military drone has crashed in northern Gaza due to unknown reasons.
A small Israeli military drone crashed in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday afternoon, the army sources said.
The drone, a Skylark model, was on a reconnaissance mission when it fell out of the sky east of Gaza City for as-yet unknown reasons.
There did not appear to be a risk that classified information could be retrieved from the device.
It was the second time this year that an Israel Defense Forces Skylark drone crashed.
In January, a Skylark drone crashed in southern Lebanon, prompting a mad dash by Israeli forces to recover the aircraft. The next day Hezbollah Lebanon claimed that it had retrieved pieces of the destroyed drone.
The “sky rider,” as it’s known in Hebrew, is a tactical surveillance drone created by Elbit Systems and operated by the IDF’s Artillery Corps. The miniature UAV can be launched by one or two people, depending on the model, and once airborne provides a live video feed to soldiers on the ground.
In August 2015, Hamas claimed it captured an Israeli Skylark drone in the Gaza Strip and reassembled it.
Kataeb al-Mujahideen, a Palestinian resistance group, also announced the start of a large-scale military exercise in the Gaza Strip. The statement from Kataeb al-Mujahideen states that the group is conducting extensive military exercises simultaneously on multiple axis, with defensive and offensive tactics in different geographical areas of the Gaza Strip, entitled “Al-Wa’d al-Ma’fool 1” military exercises.
