Iran’s Army says its air defense forces have shot down an American MQ-9 unmanned strategic aircraft over the country’s central city of Isfahan and a LUCAS drone over Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf.
In a statement on Tuesday, Iran’s Army said that Isfahan air defenses managed to successfully shoot and destroy a US-made MQ-9 Reaper, which belonged to the American-Israeli aggressors, over the city in the early hours of the day.
MQ-9 is an unmanned aerial vehicle designed for long-endurance surveillance.
In a separate statement, Iran’s Army said that its air defenses also managed to shoot and destroy a Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System (LUCAS) over Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf at 10:30 a.m. local time.
The LUCAS drones are made in the United States but they are in fact a reverse-engineered copy of the kamikaze Iranian drone called Shahed.
With the latest interceptions, the number of hostile drones destroyed by the Iranian Armed Forces’ integrated air defense network since the beginning of the ongoing US-Israeli war of aggression has reached 147.
The United States and Israel started a fresh round of aerial aggression on Iran on February 28, some eight months after they carried out unprovoked attacks on the country.
The attacks led to the martyrdom of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, as well as military commanders.
Hundreds of civilians, including women and children, have also been killed in the war so far.
Iran began to swiftly retaliate against the strikes by launching barrages of ballistic missile and drone attacks on the Israeli-occupied territories as well as on US bases in regional countries.
