SANA’A (Dispatches) – The
Yemeni army says it has shot down a ScanEagle spy drone belonging to the Saudi-led forces in Ma’rib province, in yet another successful operation targeting such costly American-made aircraft.
The spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said in a tweet on Sunday that the spy drone was downed using a “suitable weapon.”
“Our air defenses, thanks to God, were able to shoot down an American-made ScanEagle spy plane using a suitable weapon, while it was carrying out hostile actions yesterday evening, Saturday, in the airspace of the Juba district in Ma’rib province,” Saree said.
ScanEagle is a small, long-endurance, low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) built by Insitu, a subsidiary of Boeing, and is used for espionage activities. Each ScanEagle system reportedly costs $3.2 million.
In recent months, Yemeni forces have shot down at least 13 ScanEagle spy drones, many of which over areas controlled by the army and allied popular committee forces in Ma’rib.
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.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has called for a “transparent, independent and impartial” investigation into an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition on a detention center in Yemen’s northwestern city of Sa’ada, which claimed scores of lives.
The Saudi-led coalition’s airstrikes on the detention facility in Sa’ada killed at least 91 people and injured many more last week, the OHCHR said, citing preliminary figures.
Speaking to reporters in Geneva, OHCHR Spokesperson Rupert Colville said staff from its Yemen office were in Sa’ada this week as part of an interagency mission, and the information they collected “paints a chaotic and desperate picture” in the wake of the airstrikes.
“We are working to verify the civilian casualties but so far, we understand that some 91 detainees were killed, many when the upper floor of one building collapsed, and 236 others were injured,” Colville said.
Yemeni officials have called for an international investigation into the airstrike. The overnight attack created horrific scenes, with bombed-out buildings littered with bodies and hospitals overwhelmed.
The UN chief has condemned the Saudi-led air raids on Sa’ada and called for an investigation into the attacks.