Houthis claim downing of Moroccan F-16 over Yemen

Morocco lost contact with the fighter pilot on Sunday evening and could not confirm if the pilot managed to eject to safety.

Armed Houthi supporters during a rally protesting Saudi-led military operations aimed at driving out Houthis and their allies in Sanaa, Yemen on May 8, 2015. Yahya Arhab/EPA

Sanaa // Yemen’s Shiite Houthi rebels said they shot down a warplane from the Saudi-led coalition, shortly after Morocco said one of its fighter jets had gone missing on a sortie.

Morocco said contact was lost with the fighter and its pilot at 6pm (7pm UAE time) on Sunday, the official MAP news agency said.

“A second plane which was flying in formation was not able to see whether the pilot ejected,” the statement from the armed forces added.

A Saudi official said that an investigation was trying to determine the missing plane’s approximate location.

“It is definitely inside Yemen and it is a single pilot on board,” the Saudi official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Houthi news channel Al Masirah broadcast images of tribesmen in Saada, the rebels' northern stronghold, celebrating around the wreckage of a plane.

“The air defence of the tribes shot down a warplane over Wadi Nushur,” the channel said.

The network said it was an F-16 fighter jet while the footage showed a Moroccan flag on a broken rudder lying on a rocky patch.

It is the first coalition aircraft to have been reported missing over Yemen in the more than six-week bombing campaign launched on March 26.

According to Moroccan press reports, the kingdom has deployed a squadron of six F-16s for the operation.

The Houthis, as well as their allies in Yemen’s splintered armed forces routinely fire anti-aircraft guns at coalition warplanes.

The incident comes ahead of a ceasefire, scheduled to begin on Tuesday.

A Saudi-owned news channel, Al Hadath, meanwhile, aired live footage on Monday 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.

Yemen’s state news agency Saba, which is run by the rebels, did not report on the plane’s disappearance.

During the early days of the air campaign, a fighter jet crashed in the Arabian Sea off Yemen’s southern coast, but the pilot was picked up by a nearby navy vessel. Technical problems were said to have caused the crash.

*Agence France-Presse and Associated Press