The Iranian army has shot down an unidentified drone near the port of Bandar-e-Mahshahr on the Gulf coast, Iran's semi-official news agencies, ISNA and Tasnim, reported.
The unmanned aircraft was downed on Friday over Iranian territory with a domestically manufactured Mersad surface-to-air missile, Tasnim reported without elaborating on whether it was a military or civilian drone.
Iranian officials were not immediately available for comment.
The ISNA and the Young Journalists Club (YJC), affiliated to Iran's state broadcasting, said "an unknown flying object" had been shot down by the Iranian army, adding that the report had yet to be confirmed by Iranian officials.
Iran's Arabic-Language al-Alam TV channel said "residents of Imam Khomeini port city heard the sound of a missile being fired on Friday morning".
In June, Iran shot down an unmanned US surveillance drone, which the elite Revolutionary Guards said was flying over southern Iran - a move that brought the region to the brink of war. Iran’s air defense force has shot down an “unknown” drone in the country’s southwest, the official IRNA news agency reported on Friday.
The report did not say whether the drone was a military or commercially available device.
Provincial governor Gholamreza Shariati told IRNA that the drone belonged to a “foreign” country and that parts of the drone had been recovered in a nearby lagoon.
Shariati said the drone violated Iran’s airspace.
In June, Iran shot down a U.S. surveillance drone in the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran said the drone “violated” its territorial airspace, while the U.S. called the missile fire “an unprovoked attack” in international airspace over the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf.
Regional tensions remain high over Tehran’s collapsing nuclear deal with world powers, which the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from over a year ago.
