THU 28 - 3 - 2024
 
Date: May 12, 2015
Source: The Daily Star
Moroccan warplane apparently downed in Yemen
Agencies
SANAA: Shiite rebels in Yemen claimed Monday to have shot down a Moroccan F-16 fighter jet taking part in a Saudi-led coalition targeting them and their allies, just a day before a five-day humanitarian cease-fire was set to begin and as coalition airstrikes intensified in the capital, Sanaa.

Morocco’s military, however, would only say that the jet had gone missing early Sunday evening, but a Moroccan online news site with close ties to the kingdom’s royal palace and security and intelligence services said the downed aircraft was one of two that flew out of a base in the United Arab Emirates Sunday on a reconnaissance mission over the Yemeni side of the border with Saudi Arabia.

The French-language site, Le360, said rebel anti-aircraft batteries stationed atop mountains standing 1,800 meters high opened fire on the two aircraft as they flew overhead at low altitude.

“The Moroccan fighter jets maneuvered, gained altitude, attempted to escape the danger, but it was too late. One of the craft was hit and went into a spin,” Le360 said.

The purported downing of the jet fighter came as a Saudi-owned news channel, Al-Hadath, aired live footage of tanks and armored personnel carriers loaded onto giant trucks, saying they were part of a “strike force” deploying to the kingdom’s border with Yemen. There have been no signs to suggest that a ground offensive was imminent, although the coalition has not ruled one out.

Yemeni security officials, meanwhile, said Sanaa came under heavy air bombardment Monday afternoon, with the primary target being weapons and ammunition depots on Noqom mountain on the city’s northeastern outskirts. The bombing unleashed a series of explosions, with shells flying out and hitting residential areas and starting fires. There was no immediate word on civilian casualties.

A Pakistani and a Saudi were killed Monday when the Saudi border region came under renewed bombardment from Yemen, official media reported.

The Pakistani’s killing was a rare death of a foreigner during weeks of war the U.N. says have killed more than 1,400 people in Yemen.

Civil defense spokesman Ali al-Shahrani, quoted by the Saudi Press Agency, said “military missiles” hit a school and residential neighborhood in Najran city, “resulting in the death of a Pakistani resident.”

SPA said the latest barrage came from inside Yemen.

Later Monday, a residential area of Jazan district adjacent to Najran also came under attack, SPA said.

Civil defense Major Yahya al-Qahtan was quoted as saying one citizen was killed and four people, including three foreigners, were wounded by missile fire on a border village in Harth municipality. A husband and wife died in the same municipality last Tuesday when the cross-border bombardments began.

Twelve people on the Saudi side of the boundary have now been killed since Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen began firing the rockets and mortar bombs.

Iran’s semiofficial Fars News Agency reported Monday that a cargo ship carrying 2,500 tons of food, medicine, tents and blankets departed Monday afternoon from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, heading for the Yemeni port of Hudaida. The report said the ship was also carrying several journalists, rescue workers, physicians and “anti-war activists.”

On Monday, Human Rights Watch said the blockade is keeping out fuel needed for the survival of the Yemeni population, contending that it was a violation of the “laws of war.” Yemen, it said, urgently needs of fuel to power generators for hospitals overwhelmed with wounded and to pump drinking water. The coalition, it added, must urgently “implement measures for the rapid processing of oil tankers to allow the safe, secure, and speedy distribution of fuel supplies to the civilian population.”

All sides in the conflict have warned they will resume hostilities if the cease-fire is violated.

And in Malaysia, the army issued a statement Monday saying it wasn’t sending ground troops to support the Saudi-led coalition. On Sunday, the state-run Saudi Press Agency reported that a contingent of Malaysian troops arrived at Saudi air bases, without elaborating.



 
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