Yemen’s Army Downs Saudi Spy Drone over Najran
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Yemen’s air defense units managed to shoot down a Saudi-led spy drone flying in the skies over the kingdom’s southwestern border region of Najran.
The drone was brought down over al-Sawh area of the region, situated 844 kilometers (524 miles) south of the capital Riyadh, with a surface-to-air missile on Wednesday evening, the Houthi Ansarullah movement said on Twitter late on Wednesday.
The development took place only a few days after Yemeni armed forces unveiled four domestically-built long-range, surface-to-air missile defense systems, which could act as game changers and alter the course of battle in the face of the deadly campaign led by Saudi Arabia against Yemen.
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.