Downing of Saudi Jet Sign of Yemeni Air Defense’s Great Progress: Ansarullah
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement called the recent shoot-down of a Saudi-led coalition jet in the skies of Jawf province as a “fatal blow” to the aggressors, saying it indicated that Yemeni air defense units have made significant progress in the field of defense
“The downing of the Tornado fighter jet in the skies of Jawf dealt a deadly blow to the Saudi aggressors,” Mohammad Abdulsalam said on Sunday, according to Al-Masirah news channel.
“This shows that Yemeni air defense units have made great progress in the field of (anti-aircraft) defense,” he said.
Stressing that Yemeni troops and popular forces will retaliate against recent air raids conducted by Saudi warplanes on Jawf that killed over 30 civilians, including women and children, Abdulsalam said, “The enemy, by committing such violent crimes, is seeking to cover up its consecutive defeats.”
On Sunday, a senior Yemeni military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the country’s air force recently used a new domestically-made air defense system to shoot down the jet in Jawf.
“The weapon used to down the Saudi military’s Tornado fighter jet was part of the country’s new and advanced domestic air defense system,” the source said.
The civilians lost their lives after Saudi jets conducted eight aerial assaults on Jawf's al-Maslub district on Saturday. The strikes targeted people who had gathered near the wreckage of the Tornado jet that had been shot down by Yemeni forces on Friday evening.
Yemeni air defense units targeted and shot down the military aircraft in retaliation for the Riyadh regime’s ongoing aggression against the Arab country.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi back to power and crushing the Houthi Ansarullah movement.
The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past nearly five years.
The UN says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.