A major drama unfolded early this week in central Israel when a civilian drone was spotted hovering over the home of a “very senior security official,” i24 News reported.

Following the detection of the drone, security alert levels were immediately raised in the area, and protection measures around the residence were reinforced. Members of the official’s security team acted to intercept it, while police bomb-disposal units from the Central District were called to the scene out of fears that the drone was rigged with explosives.

The tension lasted for several hours as investigators examined all possible lines of inquiry, including the alarming possibility that the drone had been operated by a “hostile foreign actor.” Security forces conducted extensive searches and set up ambushes in the surrounding residential area in an effort to locate the operator of the drone that penetrated “the most sensitive compound in the country.”

The security forces eventually succeeded in locating both the drone and the operator, a resident of a city in central Israel, and he was detained for urgent questioning. The suspect said that he works as a real estate broker and was simply “filming a property as part of his work” and had no malicious intent.

The police confiscated the drone’s memory card and transferred it for forensic and technological examination in order to verify the operator’s version of events and rule out the collection of sensitive information.

(YWN Israel Desk—Jerusalem)