Local Editor
The United Arab Emirates said on Saturday that four of its soldiers died after their helicopter crashed during a routine mission in Yemen, the official news agency WAM reported.
They were "carrying out their normal mission in the Shabwa governorate in Yemen, where their helicopter had technical failure, which led to an emergency landing and hitting the ground," the agency said.
Yemen's official Saba news agency, the chopper crashed in the Amqeel area of Ar Rawdah district in the south-central Yemeni province of Shabwah on Friday afternoon.
The UAE is part of a Saudi-led coalition formed in 2015 to fight the Iran-aligned Houthi group, which controls most of northern Yemen and the capital Sanaa, in a war that has killed more than 10,000 people and displaced more than 3 million.
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has been heavily bombarding Yemen as part of a brutal campaign against its impoverished southern neighbor in an attempt to reinstall Yemen’s former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, and crush the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement, which is in control of large parts of Yemen, including the capital Sana'a.
The UAE is one of the main allies of Riyadh in its deadly war against the Yemeni nation. The United States has also been providing arms and military training as well as bombing coordinates to the Saudi-led coalition since the beginning of the protracted war, which has failed to achieve its goals.
Latest figures show that the military campaign, which lacks any international mandate, has so far killed over 12,000 Yemenis and wounded thousands more. The Saudi aggression has also taken a heavy toll on Yemen's facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
