Yemen downs advanced $30 million US spy drone over Ma’rib

Yemen’s army says it has shot down an American spy drone by “a locally-made missile” in the province of Ma’rib, amid escalating tensions in the region over Israel’s US-backed genocidal war on the Gaza Strip.

In a statement issued on Friday and carried by Yemen news agency SABA, Yemen’s armed forces announced that the country’s air defenses downed the MQ-9 drone using a surface-to-air missile on Thursday night.

According to the statement, the drone “was carrying out hostile acts in the airspace of Ma’rib.” The statement stressed that the country’s armed forces are fully prepared to thwart all the enemies’ plots.

The Yemeni military said it was the fourth aircraft, estimated to be worth $30 million, downed as part of the country’s pro-Palestine operations.

In solidarity with the Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, the Yemeni armed forces have targeted ships in the Red Sea with owners linked to Israel or those going to and from ports in the occupied territories.

In December last year, the United States formed a coalition to stop Yemen’s anti-Israel attacks.

The US and the UK have been carrying out numerous attacks against Yemen as a means of trying to pressure the country into stopping a series of operations that it has been conducting in support of Gazans.

Yemen has been conducting operations against the British and American warships that have been dispatched to the Red Sea to confront the Yemeni strikes.

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7 after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

Since the start of the offensive, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 35,303 Palestinians and injured tens of thousands more