Hizbullah leader Sayed Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged Thursday sending a drone aircraft that was shot down last weekend after flying some 25 miles into Israel.
Nasrallah said in a televised speech that the drone was Iranian-made.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said earlier Thursday that a drone aircraft, which flew into Israel before being shot down last weekend, was sent by Iranian-backed Lebanese group Hizbullah.
In a statement from his office, Netanyahu said during a tour of the southern frontier with Egypt that Israel would "act with determination to defend its borders," just as "we thwarted over the weekend Hizbullah's attempt" to penetrate Israeli airspace.
Under surveillance by Israeli fighter jets, it was shot down on Saturday over a forest near the occupied West Bank. Defense officials did not, at the time, directly accuse Hizbullah — who fought an inconclusive war with Israel in 2006 — of sending it.
On at least one previous occasion, Hizbullah has launched a drone into Israel across its northern border with Lebanon. And in 2010, an Israeli warplane shot down an apparently unmanned balloon near the Dimona nuclear reactor in southern Israel.
The Israeli military released a 10-second video clip of what it said was Saturday's mid-air interception. In the video, a small, unidentified aircraft is seen moments before being destroyed by a missile fired from a fighter jet.
