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News ID: 69587
Publish Date : 21 August 2019 - 21:54

Yemen Shoots Down U.S. Military Drone


WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- A U.S. military MQ-9 drone was shot down in Yemen’s Dhamar governorate, southeast of the capital Sanaa, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Wednesday, the second such incident in recent months.
A Houthi military spokesman had earlier said that Yemen’s air defenses had brought down a U.S. drone.
The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the drone was shot down late on Tuesday.
This is not the first time a U.S. drone has been shot down in Yemen. In June, the U.S. military said that Houthi fighters had shot down a U.S. government-operated drone.
One of the officials said that it appeared that the armed military drone, made by California-based General Atomics, had been shot down by a surface-to-air missile operated by the Houthi group.
"It appears to have been fired by the Houthis and enabled by Iran,” the official claimed, without providing details or specific evidence.
The official said that while losing a drone was expensive, it was not unprecedented and it was unlikely to lead to any major response by the United States.
The other official cautioned that it was too early to tell who was responsible for the incident.
In a statement, the U.S. military said it was investigating reports that a drone had been attacked "in authorized airspace
Iran rejects accusations from the United States and its Persian Gulf Arab allies that Tehran is providing military and financial support to the Houthis and their allies in the Yemeni army and blames Riyadh for the deepening crisis there.
Overnight, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sare’e said that the drone had been shot down.
"The rocket which hit it was developed locally and will be revealed soon at a press conference,” Sare’e said on Twitter. "Our skies are no longer open to violations as they once were and the coming days will see great surprises,” he said, noting that the drone belonged to Saudi Arabia.
 In June, Iran shot down a U.S. Global Hawk drone, far larger than the MQ-9 drone. Trump later boasted he had called off the strikes because it could have killed 150 people, but many analysts cast doubt on the claim.