The alleged Israeli drone strike on a Hezbollah media center in Beirut over the weekend destroyed precision missile infrastructure set up by the Iran-backed Shiite terrorist group, the British Times reported Tuesday.
One of the drones that crashed into the building in a Hezbollah stronghold neighborhood of Dahiya struck crates containing a high-grade propellant mix for precision-guided missiles and destroyed a remote control machine for rocket guidance, according to the report.
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The IDF has kept mum on the issue, and it remains unclear whether the two drones, said to be on an intelligence-gathering mission, were downed, or whether the first drone malfunctioned and the second was sent to destroy it.
The Lebanese Shiite group said on Tuesday that the two drones were both armed with 5.5 kilograms (12 pounds) of C4 explosives.
Military drones are often equipped with self-destruct mechanisms to prevent others from obtaining information in case of capture.
Hezbollah has been engaged in a hectic effort in recent years to improve its missile precision capabilities in an attempt to allow for direct hits on "quality targets" – otherwise known as strategic infrastructure – in Israel.
Israeli Military Intelligence pegs the terrorist group's considerable arsenal at over 120,000 projectiles, but only a few dozen carry precision capabilities.
Iran has, in the past, tried to smuggle precision missiles into Lebanon through Syria, but according to foreign media reports, Israel has managed to thwart most of these attempts via a series of strikes, mainly carried out in Syria.
As a result, Iran and Hezbollah sought to convert existing rocket-production facilities in Lebanon into precision-missile production lines – a scheme that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exposed during his speech before the United Nations General Assembly last September when he shared with world leaders information and images of three rocket conversion sites.
