Yemeni forces shoot down US-made spy drone over Jawf
Yemeni forces have shot down a Saudi spy drone made by the US over Yemen's northern Province of Jawf on Saturday as the total number of such drones downed by Yemen in the past month reaches five.
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In a statement on Saturday, carried by Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network, the spokesman for Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said “our air defenses were able to shoot down an American-made [Boeing Insitu] ScanEagle spy aircraft, with a suitable weapon.”
He added that the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was shot down “while it was carrying out hostile actions yesterday evening, Friday, in the airspace of the al-Yatama area in the Khub and Sha'af district, in al-Jawf province.”
According to the report, the downed ScanEagle spy drone on Friday night was the fifth of the same type shot down this month, and the tenth of the same type that was downed by Yemeni forces since January.
On December 13, the Yemeni army said that it had shot down a Chinese-made CH-4 spy drone belonging to the Saudi Air Force with a domestically-made surface-to-air missile, while it was carrying out hostile actions in the airspace of Asilan district in the south-central province of Shabwah.
On December 10, the Yemenis also managed to shoot down a US-made ScanEagle spy drone while it was carrying out hostile actions in the airspace of Sirwah district in the northwestern province of Ma’rib. Two days earlier, the Yemeni army shot down a CH-4 spy drone in the skies of Wadi district and a ScanEagle one over the Juba region in the same province.
Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States and regional allies, launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah resistance movement.
The war has left hundreds of thousands of Yemenis dead, and displaced millions more. It has also destroyed Yemen’s infrastructure and spread famine and infectious diseases there.
Despite heavily-armed Saudi Arabia’s incessant bombardment of the impoverished country, the Yemeni armed forces and the Popular Committees have grown steadily in strength against the Saudi-led invaders and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in the country.
