Lebanon Will No Longer Tolerate Intruding Israeli Drones: Nasrallah

“Hezbollah will endeavor to down all Israeli drones, which may violate Lebanon’s airspace,” Seyed Hassan Nasrallah stated in a televised speech broadcast live from the southern Lebanese capital city of Beirut on Sunday evening, a day after two Israeli drones crashed in a southern neighborhood of Beirut.

Hezbollah said the first drone had fallen on a building housing Hezbollah’s media office in Beirut’s Dahieh suburb. The second drone, which appeared to have been sent by Israel to search for the first one, had crashed in an empty plot nearby after being detonated in the air, it added.

Nasrallah said the Israeli drone incursion into Lebanon amounted to an open attack on the Arab country’s sovereignty.

“What happened last night was a suicide drone attack on Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahieh. This was the first Israeli attack on Lebanon since the (summer) 2006 war. The first drone was a surveillance aircraft designed to collect and transfer data to the second one,” Nasrallah said, stressing that the drone strike was meant to inflict heavy causalities on the local population, Press TV reported.

“Hezbollah will do everything possible to prevent the repetition of such attacks. If we do not respond to the Zionist attack on Dahieh, Israel will follow suit and target us just as it has hit the positions of Hashd al-Sha’abi (Popular Mobilization Units) forces in Iraq. Hezbollah will by no means allow the Israeli aggression pattern to be repeated in Lebanon,” the Hezbollah chief pointed out.

“The era of the Israeli military’s undeterred attacks on Lebanon has come to an end. Hezbollah will tolerate no more Israeli drones penetrating Lebanese airspace,” Nasrallah said.

He went on to say that Israeli missiles targeted one of Hezbollah’s civilian structures in the Damascus outskirts in Syria last night, dismissing Israeli officials’ allegations that the projectiles had hit an Iranian site there.

Nasrallah added that two Lebanese resistance fighters were killed in the missile strike, stressing that “Hezbollah will respond in kind in case the Israeli military continues to target and kill resistance forces.”

Turning to Syrian army advances in the country’s embattled northwestern province of Idlib, the Hezbollah secretary general said government forces are progressing toward final victory over foreign-sponsored Takfiri militants in the strategic region.

He then lauded the enormous sacrifices made by the Damascus government and Syrian nation in battles against Takfiri militants, underlining that Hezbollah resistance fighters are “fighting shoulder to shoulder” by Syrian army soldiers to purge terrorists from any inch of the Syrian soil.

“Enemies sought to crush the resistance axis when they sponsored militancy in Syria back in 2011. The United States called on the Lebanese government at the time to stay away war on Syria, and prevent Hezbollah’s involvement,” Nasrallah said.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the Hezbollah chief described corruption as a shameful phenomenon within Lebanon’s political arena, warning that certain people are deliberately trying to paint a bleak picture of Lebanon on social media.

Nasrallah urged the Beirut government to spare no efforts and to hold to account those who are pushing the smear campaign.