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Yemen’s Houthis Shoot Down Saudi Warplane Over Sanaa

According to Al Jazeera, the US-backed Saudi-led coalition has started carrying out a special operation to rescue the two pilots, who both survived the crash uninjured
Earlier in the day, Yemeni army soldiers and allied fighters from Popular Committees had destroyed an Emirati armored vehicle.
Earlier in the day, Yemeni army soldiers and allied fighters from Popular Committees had destroyed an Emirati armored vehicle.

Yemen’s Houthi fighters managed to down a Saudi warplane over the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, local media reported on Monday.

The Houthis shot down the F-15 fighter with a ground-to-air missile, the Houthi-affiliated Saba news agency reported, citing the army’s statement, according to Sputnik.

The incident occurred a day after another Saudi plane had crashed over the northern Yemeni province of Saada, with rebels and the Riyadh-led coalition providing conflicting reports about the accident. Saudi coalition insisted that the crash was caused by a technical malfunction, whereas the Houthis claim it was their air defense that brought the aircraft down.

According to Al Jazeera, the US-backed Saudi-led coalition has started carrying out a special operation to rescue the two pilots, who both survived the crash uninjured.

Earlier in the day, Yemeni army soldiers and allied fighters from Popular Committees had destroyed an Emirati armored vehicle north of Yakhtul coastal fishing village in Yemen’s southwestern province of Ta’izz.

The incident comes as the General People’s Congress (GPC), the political party of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, chose its new leader on Sunday after Saleh was killed in early December.

The GPC elected former deputy premier Sadiq Amin Aburas, who is seen as a close ally of Saleh.

Aburas, 65, will lead the GPC until its next general assembly, a date for which could not yet be set “because of the current difficulties”, a statement said.

Two days before Saleh was killed, the overthrown president publicly broke ties with his former allies and expressed his openness for talks with the Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthis since 2015.

Before his death, Saleh was in power for three decades in Yemen. He later joined in a coalition with the Houthis in an attempt to regain control over the impoverished country.

On Monday, a high-ranking source in GPC told Sputnik that his party’s supports and Houthis would open a new page of cooperation to fight against the Saudi-led coalition.

“As part of the political agreement between the Ansar Allah movement [Houthis] and the General People’s Congress, aimed at ending the December tensions, all political and military prisoners will be released excluding five persons that will be held by the movement including Saleh’s relatives … The agreement is aimed at opening a new page [in relations] between the main allies who are fighting against the Arab coalition headed by Saudi Arabia,” the source said.

Riyadh and its allies intervened in neighbouring Yemen in March 2015 in an attempt to push back the Houthis and reinstall fugitive president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, a Riyadh’s ally.

The war still raging in Yemen is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, according to the UN, with at least 13,000 people killed.

The UN has described the current level of hunger in Yemen as “unprecedented,” emphasizing that 17 million people are now food insecure in the country.

It added that 6.8 million, meaning almost one in four people, do not have enough food and rely entirely on external assistance.

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