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Mexican subject forces intercepted and brought down a drone that flew adjacent the South Korean nationalist shot team's grooming campy up of its World Cup lucifer against Mexico, a national authoritative told The Associated Press connected Wednesday (June 17, 2026).
Military forces utilized specialised instrumentality to observe an “unregistered drone” adjacent the South Korean camp, prompting them to “neutralise” it, the Mexican national cause said.
The authoritative spoke connected information of anonymity due to the fact that they were not authorised to sermon the incidental publicly.
Co-host Mexico won its opening Group A lucifer astatine the World Cup connected Thursday, portion South Korea beat the Czech Republic aboriginal that aforesaid day. It wasn't wide if the drone was trying to spy connected the South Korean squad up of Thursday's match betwixt the teams.
South Korea manager Hong Myung-bo called the incidental “unfortunate”.
South Korea manager Hong Myung-bo and Hwang In-beom | Photo Credit: Reuters
“Yesterday (Tuesday), during our training, determination was a drone successful the entity that we came to cognize astir the fact,” Hong said done a translator. “But fortunately, it was close earlier we practised our tactics, truthful it did not interaction us. But portion we were preparing for the match, that was the astir important timing, truthful what happened was unfortunate.”
The Mexican cognition was portion of a information program involving subject and section constabulary forces for the shot tournament, which kicked disconnected past week successful Mexico City and is being co-hosted by the United States and Canada done July 19.
The authoritative did not accidental erstwhile the incidental occurred oregon whether immoderate arrests were made.
He said lone that respective drones had been neutralised successful caller days aft attempting to participate information zones astir stadiums successful Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey — the tournament's 3 big cities successful Mexico — arsenic good arsenic squad basal camps and instrumentality festivals.
Plan Kukulkan
In March, Mexican authorities announced a World Cup information cognition known arsenic “Plan Kukulkan”, involving astir 100,000 unit from national and section subject and constabulary forces.
The program includes aboriginal informing systems, information measures astatine stadiums, airports, roads and hotels, and extortion protocols for teams, officials and fans.
In Canada, authorities person banned unauthorized drones from flying implicit World Cup stadiums and respective grooming sites successful Vancouver and Toronto arsenic a information measure. The restrictions stay successful effect until July 7 — the day of the past crippled scheduled to beryllium staged successful the country.
In 2024, the Canadian women's nationalist squad was accused of utilizing a drone to spy connected a New Zealand grooming league successful the days starring up to their opening lucifer astatine the Paris Olympics, triggering a spying ungraded that led to sanctions against Canada.
The ungraded led to the suspension of 2 coaching unit members and caput manager Bev Priestman, who was subsequently dismissed by Canada Soccer.
The Canadian women's squad — the reigning Olympic champions from the Tokyo Games — was deducted six points from its radical standings successful France.
Canada Soccer aboriginal determined that the incidental was not an isolated mistake but portion of a signifier of insufficient oversight wrong the nationalist teams.
