SANA’A (Press TV) – Yemeni forces have intercepted and targeted a second U.S.-built Boeing Insitu ScanEagle spy drone in as many days. The drone, operated by the Saudi-led military coalition, was downed while flying above the central province of Ma’rib.
The spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, said in a post published on his Twitter page on Tuesday that Yemeni air defense forces had used a domestically-developed surface-to-air missile to shoot down the unmanned aerial vehicle that was on an espionage mission in the skies of al-Mushajah area in the Sirwah district.
The Boeing Insitu ScanEagle is a small, long-endurance, low-altitude unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) built by Insitu, a subsidiary of Boeing, and is used for reconnaissance.
A day earlier, the media bureau of Yemen’s popular Ansarullah resistance movement released a video of Yemeni air defense forces intercepting and shooting down the same type of unmanned aerial vehicle with a surface-to-air missile over the Sirwah district.
Meanwhile, Yemeni Foreign Minister Hisham Sharaf Abdullah said his compatriots would not accept a peace agreement with the Saudi-led coalition as long as its brutal siege against the crisis-stricken Arab country remained in place.
“The Yemeni people cannot accept truce and peace deals in light of the continuous blockade, which is being enforced by the Riyadh and Abu Dhabi regimes under the supervision of London and Washington,” Lebanon-based and Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network quoted him as saying.
He added, “Our arms are yet wide open to honorable and just peace, which would take the interests and dignity of Yemenis into account.”
Saudi Arabia, backed by the U.S. and regional allies, launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing the government of former Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing Ansarullah.
Meanwhile, Yemeni children strongly denounced the United Nations’ support for the Saudi-led coalition, after it failed to single out Riyadh and its allies for their crimes against kids in the war-torn country in its latest report, saying that the world body has, through its actions, made itself their enemy.
A large number of children Tuesday staged a demonstration in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, blasting the UN for failing to add the Saudi-led coalition forces to its “list of shame,” an addendum to the latest UN report that singles out parties who fail to keep children safe during the conflict.
According to Yemen-based television network Al-Masirah, the Yemeni children in a statement censured the world body for “blaming the oppressed and acquitting the oppressor” in lieu of money, while holding both sides of the war responsible for violence against children in the war-ravaged country.
In its annual Children and Armed Conflict report, released on Monday, the UN said at least 19,379 children affected by war in 2020 were victims of grave violations such as armed recruitment or rape.
“Escalation of conflict, armed clashes and disregard for international humanitarian law and international human rights law had a severe impact on the protection of children,” the report noted.
The highest number of grave violations, according to the report, was reported in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen.
The report, however, failed to highlight grave violations committed by the Saudi-led coalition forces in Yemen, drawing sharp criticism.