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UAE reports plane missing in Yemen UAE reports plane missing in Yemen
(about 1 hour later)
The United Arab Emirates has said that one of its warplanes taking part in the Saudi-led war in Yemen is missing. An Emirati fighter jet taking part in a combat mission against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen has gone missing, the United Arab Emirates has said.
The Emirates’ military made the announcement in a single-sentence statement to the state-run WAM news agency on Monday. It described the event as the “loss of a fighter aircraft”. “The supreme command of the armed forces announced today that a fighter jet taking part in the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia … in Yemen was missing,” said a statement on the official WAM news agency.
Officials in the seven-emirate federation could not be immediately reached for comment. It is the first known case of an Emirati jet from the coalition going missing since the Saudi-led campaign began in March last year.
Last year, a Saudi-led coalition began a campaign of airstrikes targeting Shia rebels known as Houthis, who had earlier taken the Yemeni capital, Sana’a. Coalition warplanes launched airstrikes on Yemen’s second city, Aden, for the first time last week.
The war in the Arab world’s poorest country has killed more than 6,000 people and created what the United Nations warns is a “humanitarian catastrophe”, with 7.6 million people “severely food insecure” and 3.4 million children out of school. Security officials and witnesses said a jet had crashed into a nearby mountain on Monday as coalition warplanes operated in the vicinity after clashes erupted between Yemeni forces and jihadis.
Al-Qaida and Islamic State have taken advantage of the conflict between Iran-backed insurgents and pro-government forces to reinforce their presence in the south, including in Aden.
Apache helicopters took part in the fighting on Monday, security officials said. “We saw Apache helicopters fire rockets and open machine gunfire at al-Qaida militants” in Aden’s Mansura district, a witness said.
Security sources estimate that about 300 heavily armed al-Qaida fighters are entrenched in Mansura.
The UAE did not immediately give details on the missing plane.
In December, a Bahraini F-16 crashed in Saudi Arabia due to a “technical error”.The pilot was saved and the plane’s wreckage was found. It was the second coalition jet to crash after a Moroccan warplane went down during a mission over Yemen in May. Its pilot was later found dead and his body was returned home.
The coalition said at the time the crash had been caused by a technical fault or human error. It denied rebel claims that they downed the plane.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which play key roles in the coalition, have suffered the alliance’s heaviest losses in Yemen, with dozens of soldiers killed.
In Yemen, more than 6,100 people have died – half of them civilians – since the coalition launched its campaign, according to the UN.