Downing of US MQ-9 Drone Over Hodeida Shows Direct US Involvement in Yemeni War
Yemen’s Houthi-allied military has made significant strides in its air-defense sector and has become a real threat to Saudi-led Coalition and U.S. operations over Yemen
HODEIDA, YEMEN — News that a U.S. government drone was shot down over Yemen’s port city of Hodeida has provoked anger among local residents, who say it is clear evidence of direct U.S. involvement in a war which has resulted in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the UN, and has left almost 25 million people in need of aid.
On Sunday, Lieutenant Colonel Earl Brown, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), said in a statement that on June 6 Houthi fighters shot down a U.S. government MQ-9 Reaper drone using an SA-6 surface-to-air missile, adding that the altitude at which the drone was shot down “indicated an improvement over previous Houthi capability.”
U.S. officials attempted to link the attack on a U.S. drone on Yemen’s coast to the downing of the MQ-9 on June 13, as the unmanned surveillance aircraft was said to be flying over one of two crippled oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia claim were also targeted by Iran. High-ranking Yemeni officials strongly reject this link, but also assert that they will not hesitate to accept any help to defend their country.
The CENTCOM statement confirmed reporting by MintPress that the Yemeni army, loyal to the Houthis, shot down a U.S.-made MQ-9 Reaper in al-Jabaliyah on the country’s west coast. It is not the first U.S. drone downed by Houthi forces. On June 4, a U.S.-made drone was downed and last month a U.S.-made General Atomics MQ-1 Predator drone was shot down in Yemen. This March, Yemeni forces shot down an MQ-1 Predator over Yemen’s capital, Sana’a. A few weeks later, an MQ-1C drone was shot down, also over Sana’a.
Yemen’s Houthi movement called Brown’s statement an avowal of U.S. participation in the war. Mohammed Abdulsalam, a spokesman for the Houthis, said: “The U.S. military admitting the downing of the reconnaissance drone on Yemen’s west coast proves that the aggression carries a U.S.-Zionist agenda.” He claimed that the U.S. has been involved in “various crimes committed for the fifth year against our people.”
This was not the only incident that angered local residents in Yemen this week. Families of the victims of a Saudi airstrike on a Yemeni school bus — including Zaid al Tayeb, who lost two sons in the attack — told MintPress that the Trump administration’s emergency authorization allowing a top defense firm the right to build high-tech bomb parts in Saudi Arabia is a gift to the Kingdom that killed their loved ones.
Earlier this month, Trump granted Riyadh its very own bomb factory, despite the Kingdom’s abysmal human rights record, prompting fear from Yemenis that the move will allow Saudi Arabia to reinforce its stockpile, which is already tens of thousands strong, and that the new weapons would not be used for their stated purpose of countering Iran, but instead would be dropped on Yemen.
On August 10, 2018, Zaid al Tayeb lost two of his sons — Ahmed and Ali — in a deadly school bus attack in Dhahran city in Sadaa, northern Yemen, when Saudi warplanes dropped the U.S.-manufactured Raytheon Mark-82 bomb, killing 40 children. Saudi warplanes also used the Mark-82 in a 2016 attack on a funeral in the capital Sana’a. That attack claimed over 140 lives and injured 525 others.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/downing-of-us-drone-over-hodeida-shows-direct-us-involvement-in-yemen-war/259298/