Yemeni Forces Shoot Down US-Made Spy Drone over Hajjah

Yemeni air defense units shot down the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as it was carrying out hostile activities over the Harad district on Tuesday morning, according to Brigadier General Yahya Saree, a spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, announcing this in a post on Twitter.

The Boeing Insitu ScanEagle is a small, long-range, low-altitude UAV created by Insitu, a Boeing subsidiary, that is employed for espionage by the Saudi-led coalition.

Meanwhile, hundreds of Saudi-backed militants loyal to Yemen's former Saudi-backed administration have reportedly defected and joined Yemeni armed forces in the country's oil-producing region of Ma'rib, as Yemeni troops continue to make significant gains against Saudi mercenaries.

According to the Arabic-language Yemen Press Agency, 40 commanders and conscripts from the Saudi-led coalition's 310th and 114th Brigades announced their defection, citing anonymous sources.

The defected officers and conscripts left the coalition troops' camps in the Wadi Ubaida district and traveled to the Yemeni armed forces' positions in the al-Jubah district, according to the sources.

Saudi Arabia began its catastrophic assault on Yemen in March 2015, working with a number of partners and receiving arms and logistical help from the United States and other Western countries.

The goal was to restore Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi's former Riyadh-backed regime to power and crush the popular Ansarullah resistance organization, which had been controlling Yemen's affairs in the absence of a functioning government.

Despite killing hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and plunging the country into the world's worst humanitarian crisis, the war has fallen well short of its objectives.

In the face of the Saudi-led invaders, Yemeni forces have become stronger. In recent months, they have pushed near important areas held by Saudi-led mercenaries, such as Ma'rib province, and have undertaken many rounds of counter-strikes against Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Several high-ranking pro-Hadi militant commanders have been killed after multiple powerful explosions struck their positions in Ma’rib province.

Local sources, who requested not to be named, said one of the blasts targeted the camp of UAE-backed militants – better known by the nom de guerre the Giants – on the borders between Ma’rib and Shabwah provinces.

Another explosion shook the command center of Saudi-backed militants. There were no immediate reports about the extent of damage caused.

Separately, Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported that Saudi jets repeatedly bombarded different sites in Hajjah province on Monday evening.

Fighter jets from the Royal Saudi Air Force launched four airstrikes on the Harad district, as well as a raid on the Hayran district.

Furthermore, the Saudi-led military coalition’s soldiers and mercenaries have breached the Hudaydah truce 151 times in the last 24 hours.

Citing an unnamed source in Yemen’s Liaison and Coordination Officers Operations Room, al-Masirah TV reported that the violations included reconnaissance flights over al-Jabaliyah and Hays districts, 18 counts of artillery bombardment, and 112 shooting incidents.