RIYADH — Two Saudi National Guard officers are dead after their helicopter crashed in the Najran region, and the explanation depends on who is speaking. The Saudi-led coalition says a technical malfunction brought the aircraft down. On Saturday, Yemen’s Houthis claimed they had shot down a Saudi Apache helicopter near Najran’s border region.
Maj. Gen. Turki Al-Maliki, spokesman for the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen, said on Sunday that the aircraft was an AH-6i reconnaissance helicopter belonging to the Ministry of National Guard and that it went down inside Saudi territory. The helicopter “crashed due to a technical malfunction, resulting in the martyrdom of its two-officer crew,” he said in a statement on X. Earlier that day, he said, coalition air defences destroyed two ballistic missiles launched toward Khamis Mushait and a drone targeting the Riyadh region.
The Houthi account points the other way. Their military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, said in a post on X that the Apache was downed with an “appropriate weapon” while it carried out “hostile operations” against Houthi positions along the border, according to Xinhua. He gave no details on the weapon, the crew’s fate or the exact location.
Xinhua said Saudi Arabia had no immediate comment and that the claim could not be independently verified. The two accounts differ on both the aircraft and the cause, and neither Arab News nor Anadolu, in reporting the coalition’s statement, mentions the Houthi claim. Nothing in the reports TEH reviewed shows that the two describe the same helicopter, or that enemy fire played any part.
Najran lies on the Yemen border and, Arab News noted, has been repeatedly targeted by Houthi attacks. TEH reported in September that Houthi strikes on four Saudi cities included Najran. On Saturday, the coalition said it destroyed four drones over Riyadh, the Eastern Province and southern regions, along with two ballistic missile launchers in Yemen’s Saada governorate.
The distinction matters in a war that has escalated since Yemen’s conflict reignited in July after years of relative calm, Arab News said. It added that an attack on Riyadh airport last week killed 13 people, according to previous reports.
The published statements give no names for the officers, no exact crash site and no time. Are the Apache the Houthis say they downed and the AH-6i the coalition says malfunctioned the same aircraft? The statements do not say.
