ABC News reports that anonymous Pentagon officials have verified the downing of a MQ-9 Reaper.
Unnamed authorities told several media sites that a US military drone was shot down on Wednesday while flying over the coast of Yemen, and they blamed the attack on a Houthi group. Amidst ongoing warfare in Gaza, the armed group has earlier threatened to launch drone and rocket assaults against Israel.
According to sources, the MQ-9 Reaper drone was shot down in international airspace, and the US Central Command is currently looking into what happened.
A Pentagon official told ABC News, “We can confirm that Houthi forces shot down a US military MQ-9 remotely piloted aircraft off the coast of Yemen.”
In additional video that the organisation claimed captured the incident, an air defence missile is shown striking an aircraft and catching fire.
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The drone was struck “while carrying out hostile, monitoring, and spying operations in Yemeni territorial waters along with the US military support to the Israeli entity,” according to a spokesman for the Houthis, a group that has held de facto authority over a portion of Yemen since 2014.
The spokesperson went on, “Horrible acts won’t deter the Yemeni armed forces from conducting military operations against [the] Israeli entity in solidarity with the oppression of Palestinian nation.”
As a show of support for the Palestinians in Gaza, Houthi officials acknowledged late last month that they had launched multiple drone and missile strikes on Israel. They then promised further attacks.
Prior to this, the US military claimed to have shot down missiles over the Red Sea that were aimed at Israel. In October, reports surfaced of a US Navy destroyer intercepting drones and cruise missiles fired by Houthi forces.
Since the fatal Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, US officials have also admitted a number of “unarmed” surveillance drone flights over Gaza. However, they have insisted that the purpose of these missions was to find hostages that the Palestinian militant group had taken hostage.
