A US official said that Washington had no indication that an unmanned aircraft that had crashed in Iran had actually been shot down.
In Tehran, state television quoted a military source as saying that Iran’s military had shot down a US reconnaissance drone aircraft in eastern Iran. “There is absolutely no indication up to this point that Iranians shot down this drone,” the official told NBC News.
The NATO-led force in Afghanistan said the drone the Iranians claim to have shot down may be an unarmed surveillance drone that was lost last week while flying over western Afghanistan. A surveillance drone flying over western Afghanistan had gone out of control late last week and may be the one Iran said it had shot down over its own airspace, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on Sunday.
“The UAV to which the Iranians are referring may be a U.S. unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week. The operators of the UAV lost control of the aircraft and had been working to determine its status,” an ISAF statement said.
The statement about the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was issued in Kabul and released to reporters covering an international conference on Afghanistan in the German city Bonn. Iran’s armed forces have shot down an unmanned U.S. spy plane that violated Iranian airspace along the country’s eastern border, the official IRNA news agency reported Sunday.
Source: NBC