SANA’A (Dispatches) – Yemeni forces have reportedly fired a surface-to-air missile (SAM) towards an American F-16 warplane.
The incident that occurred on February 19 saw the aircraft being targeted while flying off the coast of Yemen over the Red Sea, Fox News reported on Saturday, citing “senior Pentagon officials.”
Also during the day, Yemeni forces fired another such missile towards an advanced American MQ-9 Reaper drone, the channel added.
Yemen’s Armed Forces have not commented on the report so far.
The Yemeni troops began staging hundreds of operations against Israeli and American targets following the Israeli regime’s launch of a heavily-U.S.-backed war of genocide against the Gaza Strip on October 7, 2023.
In January, they launched a large-scale attack on U.S. aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea, forcing it to retreat to the northernmost part of the waterway. 
The vessel had replaced USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier that had similarly beat a retreat last November amid intense Yemeni strikes.
Tel Aviv and Washington have responded by staging deadly airstrikes against Yemen’s civilian infrastructures, including the Arab Peninsula nation’s lifeline port city of al-Hudaydah, and the country’s defenses.
The Fox News report alleged that the missiles had fallen short of the targets, a claim that the Pentagon almost routinely comes up with in the aftermath of Yemen’s retaliatory strikes, but is rejected by the Yemeni Armed Forces.
The Yemeni operations have so far led to shooting down of many MQ-9 Reaper UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles).
The American channel also alleged that the reported February 19 development marked “the first time,” when the Yemeni forces were targeting a U.S. warplane.
Last December, however, the troops announced that they had successfully thwarted a joint American-British attack by shooting down a U.S. F-18 fighter jet and forcing other aircraft to withdraw from Yemeni airspace. 
The forces’ spokesman Brigadier General Yahya Saree has repeatedly asserted that the troops would continue to defend the country’s national sovereignty and respond to all acts of aggression.