A U.S. army surveillance drone was shot down off the coast of Yemen on Wednesday by Iran-backed Houthi rebels, the Pentagon stated.
Pentagon officers, talking on the situation of anonymity to debate operational issues, confirmed that the drone, an MQ-9 Reaper, had been shot down. However they might not say if the plane was armed, the place it was flying from or different particulars.
The downing of a Reaper drone, the mainstay of the American army’s aerial surveillance fleet, was the newest escalation of violence between the USA and Iran-backed teams in Yemen, Iraq and Syria. The episodes have underscored the dangers that the battle between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas might spiral right into a wider conflict.
On Oct. 19, a U.S. Navy warship within the northern Crimson Sea shot down 4 cruise missiles and greater than two dozen drones launched from Yemen that the Pentagon stated might need been headed towards Israel.
Yemen’s Houthi militia claimed it had attempted an attack on southern Israel on Oct. 31, saying it had launched a “massive batch” of ballistic and cruise missiles, in addition to drones, towards Israeli targets. The Israeli army stated its aerial protection system had intercepted a surface-to-surface missile fired towards Israel “from the world of the Crimson Sea.” It stated it had additionally intercepted different “aerial threats” within the space, none of which entered Israeli territory.
The Protection Division stated on Wednesday that there had been a minimum of 41 assaults on U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq by Iran-backed militias since Oct. 17. At the least 46 U.S. service members have been injured, 25 of whom suffered traumatic mind accidents, the Pentagon stated.