Yemen’s Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani has urged civil aviation authorities and international airlines to take account of what he said was a new risk to civilian flights over the southern Red Sea. He said the Huthi group was using Iranian air defence weapons converted into cruise missiles, with the potential to threaten international flight paths in the area.
The Yemeni Armed Forces said they had detected the Huthis using the converted weapons from al-Hudaydah Governorate. The forces did not provide the number of weapons involved, their precise origin or details of Iranian involvement in their conversion.
Majed al-Nuzaili, a spokesperson for the Yemeni Armed Forces, said the missile could loiter for up to 25 minutes. He said it used heat-seeking technology to pursue heat sources. Yemeni army intelligence assessed that the weapons could not distinguish military targets from civilian ones.
Al-Nuzaili said the Huthis had employed the weapons through innovative techniques and tactics. The details of those methods, and the technical success rate of the conversions, were not disclosed.
The minister referred to the 2020 downing of Ukrainian flight PS752 in Tehran, which claimed 176 lives, in setting out the potential consequences of weapons that cannot distinguish between civilian and military targets. His warning did not identify any civilian aircraft that had been targeted or damaged by the converted weapons.
The aviation warning comes alongside continuing military activity. Brigadier General Turki Al-Maliki, spokesman for the Coalition to Support Legitimacy, said the coalition had intercepted and destroyed two drones launched by the Houthis towards the Riyadh area. He said it had also destroyed a ballistic missile aimed at Khamis Mushait in Saudi Arabia.
The Huthis, meanwhile, said Saudi airstrikes had hit a bridge in al-Makhadir district of Ibb Governorate. The available accounts did not provide further details of the reported strike.
Yemen’s political leadership has also called for a broader response to the conflict. Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council, called for general mobilisation and a national call to arms in a speech marking the 64th anniversary of the 26 September 1962 Revolution.
Alimi also offered a comprehensive amnesty, in line with constitutional and legal procedures, to anyone who leaves the Huthis and stops fighting or working for them. The appeal placed the missile warning within a wider effort by the Yemeni authorities to press members of the group to abandon its campaign.
The immediate concern set out by the minister is the possible exposure of civilian aviation to weapons designed around heat-seeking technology and reported to lack target discrimination. The extent of the Huthis’ holdings of such converted missiles remains unknown, as does the full scale of their operational use from al-Hudaydah Governorate.
Comments (0)