Yemeni forces shoot down Saudi reconnaissance drone in Najran

Yemeni army forces, supported by allied fighters from Popular Committees, have intercepted and targeted a Saudi unmanned aerial vehicle as it was flying in the skies over the kingdom’s southwestern border region of Najran.

An unnamed Yemen military source said Yemeni air defense forces and their allies shot down the drone as it was on a reconnaissance mission near al-Khazra border crossing on Tuesday evening, the Houthi Ansarullah movement said in a statement.

Separately, a barrage of Saudi missiles and artillery rounds rained down on residential areas in the Monabbih district of Yemen’s northwestern province of Sa’ada.

There were no immediate reports about possible casualties and the extent of damage caused.

Moreover, scores of Saudi-sponsored militiamen loyal to Yemen’s former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi were killed when Yemeni soldiers and their allies targeted their gatherings south of Kilo 16 district in the western Yemeni province of Hudaydah.

Earlier on Tuesday, Yemeni troopers and Popular Committees fighters fired a domestically-developed Zelzal-2 (Earthquake-2) ballistic missile and several mortar shells at the positions of Saudi mercenaries in the Boqa’ desert of Jizan, leaving several militiamen dead and injured.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating military campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of Hadi back to power and crushing the country’s popular Ansarullah movement.

Some 15,000 Yemenis have been killed and thousands more injured since the onset of the Saudi-led aggression.

More than 2,200 others have died of cholera, and the crisis has triggered what the United Nations has described as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.