A military drone fell in Jenin in Samaria on Saturday night, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.
A local wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group claimed to have shot down the UAV, publishing a video that they said showed the downed drone, of the quadcopter type.
The incident is under investigation, according to the IDF.
On June 26, Hezbollah claimed to have shot down an Israeli military drone in Lebanese territory. The IDF confirmed the report, adding that no sensitive information was leaked.
The Jenin incident occurred in the backdrop of escalating security tensions in the Palestinian city and across northern Samaria.
The Israeli military on June 22 eliminated a three-man terror cell in Samaria via a drone strike on their vehicle.
The cell had fired on a military checkpoint near Jalamah in the Jenin area, and was responsible for a number of attacks on Judea and Samaria communities, according to the IDF. It was the first drone strike carried out by the Israeli military in Judea and Samaria since 2006.
On June 19, the IDF deployed an Apache gunship to evacuate wounded soldiers hit by an improvised explosive device in Jenin. It was the first Israeli airstrike in Judea and Samaria since the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.
PIJ claimed responsibility for the roadside bombing in Jenin. Its leader, Ziad al-Nakhaleh, said in an interview published on Saturday in the Iranian Arabic-language newspaper Al-Vefagh that the Iran-backed terror group was setting up “combat battalions” in Palestinian cities across Judea and Samaria.
