A drone strikes a building near Netanyahu’s home on the coast of Israel

A drone launched from Lebanon struck a building near a private residence of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday, highlighting the ongoing challenge that unmanned vehicles pose to Israel’s air defense, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said.

Mr. Netanyahu and his wife were not home at the time of the raid, according to the Prime Minister’s Office, which said there were no casualties.

This incident came about a week after a Hezbollah drone attack that killed four people and injured dozens of others at a military base in northern Israel.

The army said it intercepted two additional drones launched on Saturday that sounded air raid sirens at a military base in Glilot, north of Tel Aviv. But that did not set off sirens in Caesarea, the coastal location of Netanyahu’s home. The military said the incident was “under review.”

In a statement, Netanyahu described the drone strike as an attempt to assassinate him, describing it as a “serious mistake.” He added: “This will not prevent me or deter the State of Israel from continuing our just war against our enemies.”

Israel has some of the most advanced and effective air defense technology in the world, a multi-layered system that has intercepted nearly all of the thousands of drones, missiles and missiles fired at it by Iran and its regional forces, including Hezbollah, over the past year. In Lebanon.

But the drones – which are cheaper for their adversaries to acquire and operate – have sometimes managed to evade Israeli air defenses. Experts say they pose a particular challenge to Israel because they emit less heat, often contain less metal and fly at lower altitudes and slower speeds than the missiles and missiles its air defenses are primarily designed to thwart.

On Saturday, when the IDF tried to determine how a drone evaded the regime in Caesarea, it said dozens more “projectiles” had entered Israel from Lebanon.

Most were intercepted or allowed to fall into unpopulated areas, but one man was killed and another wounded during a rocket barrage fired toward the city of Acre. According to Magen David Adomthe Israeli emergency service.

Israel’s weakness in the face of drones was also demonstrated in June, when Hezbollah broadcast footage of sensitive facilities in Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, taken from a drone that was apparently flying over the northern city without being detected.

The Hezbollah drone incident that killed four soldiers occurred about a week ago at a military training base near Binyamina, just outside Caesarea.

In July, Israel was shocked when a drone launched by Yemen’s Houthi militia, another Iranian proxy, crashed into an apartment building near a US Embassy branch office in a popular beachfront neighborhood in Tel Aviv, killing one person and wounding it. Eight more. .

Rawan Sheikh Ahmed He contributed reporting from Haifa, Israel.