Two Saudi Pilots Killed in Copter Crash in Yemen

Date: 14 September 2018 - 21:19

News ID: ۵۷۳۴۸

DUBAI (Dispatches) – Two Saudi pilots were killed when their helicopter came down in the eastern Yemeni province of al-Mahra on Friday, the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthi Ansarullah group in Yemen said.
In a statement carried by the Saudi Press Agency, the coalition said the helicopter, which belongs to the Saudi ground forces, had crashed following technical issues.
"(The helicopter came down) when it was carrying out its tasks of fighting terrorism and smuggling in al-Mahra in Yemen,” the statement said, quoting the coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki.
The incident came after the Houthi Ansarullah movement warned Saudi Arabia and its allies were positioned to attack food storage facilities in Yemeni port town of al-Hudaydah.
The Saudi-led coalition this week intensified its military campaign to take over the strategic port.
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the chairman of the Supreme Revolutionary Committee of Yemen, revealed in a Twitter post on Thursday that Riyadh had plans to attack food storage facilities and silos across Hudaydah - which is the main conduit for food supplies into the war-torn country - under the false pretext that they were being used to store weapons.
He also warned that the coalition was going to target Hudaydah's populated areas with "blind strikes."
Houthi said the decision came amid a media campaign by the aggressors to justify their atrocities in the city.
The warnings followed the resumption of relentless attacks by Saudi Arabia and its allies, including the United Arab Emirates, against Yemen after UN-brokered talks between warring parties failed in Geneva last week.
The talks were aborted after the UN failed to meet conditions set by Yemen’s Ansarullah movement that included transferring Yemenis who had been wounded as a result of the Saudi-led war to hospitals and also providing guarantees over the safety of the Yemeni delegation attending the talks.
Ansarullah also accused Saudi Arabia of planning to strand the Yemeni delegation in Djibouti, where their plane was to make a stop en route to Geneva.