DUBAI: Yemen’s Houthi forces shot down a warplane of the Saudi-led coalition in Saada province, broadcasters said on Sunday. Saudi Arabia’s Royal Air Force said two of its pilots whose fighter jet crashed during an operation in Yemen on Sunday have been rescued. An official statement blamed the crash on a “technical failure” but the Yemeni rebel-run al-Masirah television said the British-made Tornado fighter jet was hit while flying in Yemeni airspace over the northern province of Saada, which borders Saudi Arabia. The rebels, known as Houthis, said the jet crashed on Saudi soil. A statement by the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen said the pilots were not injured and were evacuated to Saudi Arabia by ground and air forces. The coalition did not say where the crash occurred. Multiple Saudi and Emirati fighter jets have crashed over Yemen, killing the pilots on board, in the nearly three years since the kingdom launched a war against the rebels. The fighting has killed at least 10,000 Yemeni civilians and driven millions to the brink of famine. Despite the coalition’s devastating airstrikes, the rebels continue to control the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and much of the country’s north. The rebels overran Sanaa in 2014, kicking out the internationally recognised government, which the coalition is fighting to restore to power. Meanwhile, the party of former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh named a new leader on Sunday after he was killed last month by the Iran-aligned Houthi movement his one-time allies in the country’s civil war. Questions have arisen over where the loyalty of the General People’s Congress (GPC) fighters lay after Saleh was killed in a roadside attack after switching sides, abandoning the Houthis in favor of a Saudi-led coalition. Sunday’s announcement condemned the Saudi “aggression” and said the party would keep resisting, but did not mention the Houthis. It said Sadeq Amin Abou Rass, a former agriculture minister, had succeeded Saleh. Saleh’s exiled son Ahmed Ali Saleh, had vowed to lead a campaign against the Houthi movement after his was killed, but the statement on Sunday did not mention his name either. Yemen’s war, pitting the Houthis who control the capital Sanaa against the Saudi-led military alliance backing a different government based in the south, has resulted in what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. “What happened (Saleh’s killing) will not prompt us to make peace with the aggressors against the sovereignty, the dignity and the freedom of our great Yemeni people,” the statement said. It also called for releasing all the party’s prisoners, including Saleh’s family members and employees of his TV channel Yemen al-Yawm, detained by the Houthis – held after Saleh switched sides. The statement said the party remained open to all Yemeni factions and national reconciliation. The Saudi-led coalition has called on party members to join the internationally recognized government and offered an amnesty to its fighters. For months, the Houthis have retaliated with attacks on Saudi Arabia from its mountainous strongholds in northern Yemen and has launched around a dozen ballistic missiles at the kingdom, all of which were intercepted. People in war-torn Yemen are facing a situation that “looks like the Apocalypse”, the UN’s humanitarian chief had told Al Jazeera, warning that the country could become the worst humanitarian disaster in half a century. The situation in Yemen looks like the apocalypse,” Mark Lowcock, the UN’s undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator had said on Friday. “The conflict is having a devastating effect, causing widespread food shortages and a major cholera outbreak as well as leaving millions in need of humanitarian assistance.” Lowcock said “a terrible new epidemic” of diphtheria, a bacterial disease which should be completely preventable by immunisation, has already “affected up to 500 people with dozens and dozens of deaths” in the past few weeks “That is going to spread like wildfire,” he added. “Unless the situation changes, we’re going to have the world’s worst humanitarian disaster for 50 years”. Published in Daily Times, January 8th 2018.