Lebanon’s Hezbollah says it downed Israeli drone.

Hezbollah says it downed an Israeli drone in southern Lebanon on Monday in the latest flare-up raising tensions between the Iran-backed group and Israel.

The drone is now in Hezbollah’s possession, the group said in a statement.

The incident happened a week after Hezbollah and Israel exchanged cross-border fire marking their fiercest shelling exchange since the 2006 Lebanon war.

After last week’s clash the group’s leader said Hezbollah would shoot down Israeli drones in Lebanese airspace.

An Israeli military statement said one of its drones “fell inside southern Lebanon during routine operations”. It did not say why the drone crashed but said: “there is no concern information could be taken from it!”. An Israeli military spokeswoman said it was a “simple drone” without elaborating.

Hezbollah said its fighters had used “appropriate weapons” to bring down the drone on the edge of the southern Lebanese town of Ramyah.

Reporting from the Israel-Lebanon border, a correspondent for Hezbollah’s al-Manar television said the drone had not sustained much damage and had been in Lebanese airspace for around five minutes.

Lebanon’s government has repeatedly complained to the United Nations about Israel, which Beirut considers an enemy country, breaching its airspace.

Nasrallah said while last Sunday’s border clash with Israel was over, the episode had launched a “new phase” in which they no longer had red lines it would not cross.

In that brief clash, Hezbollah said it destroyed an Israeli armored vehicle, killing and wounding those insides, and broadcast what it said was footage of two missiles hitting a moving vehicle.