.View photo: Hamas's armed wing has previously displayed a drone several metres in length and with the appearance of a small plane (AFP Photo/Said Khatib)
A drone launched from the Gaza Strip
crashed inside Israel on Thursday, the Israeli military said, the third
such incursion in just under a year, with previous incidents claimed by
Hamas.
"Some kind of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was spotted entering Israeli airspace from the Strip," an army spokeswoman told AFP.
"Fragments of it were later found in Israeli territory... right next to the (border) fence," she said.
She could not immediately say if the UAV was armed or fitted with a surveillance camera.
Hamas's
armed wing has previously displayed a drone several metres in length
and with the appearance of a small plane, though it was not immediately
clear if Thursday's UAV was similar.
Last July Israel shot down a
Hamas drone near the southern city of Ashkelon close to the Gaza border
and in a separate incident downed another off the Mediterranean port of
Ashdod, 28 kilometres (17 miles) north of Gaza and a similar distance
south of Tel Aviv.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Thursday's flight.
The
Islamic militant group Hamas, the de facto ruler in Gaza, claimed
responsibility for the drone incursions on July 14 and 17 last year.
They
took place a few days after Israel launched a 50-day war against Hamas
in Gaza which killed some 2,200 Palestinians, most of them civilians,
and 73 on the Israeli side, most of them soldiers.
The conflict also caused heavy damage to Gaza's infrastructure and damaged more than 160,000 homes.
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