Missiles and Counter Missiles, who is telling the truth and how will this affect Horn Africa

[Old_Observer]

Egyptian Killed by Malfunctioning Saudi Missile Defense Shield Strike

 

 

An Egyptian man working in a Saudi prince palace was killed after a missile fired by the Saudi army's air defense system to intercept an incoming Yemeni army missile went astray and struck residential areas in the Saudi capital on Sunday night.

Spokesman of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen war Colonel Turki al-Maliki said that the Yemeni missile had targeted King Khalid International Airport, 35km away from Riyadh.

The Saudi air defense units which should have traced and intercepted the missile hundreds of kilometers away after it entered the country's airspace picked up the enemy missile on radar screens only after it flew over Riyadh to hit the airport.

The Saudi officials claimed last night that the country's missile system has intercepted all the seven missiles fired by the army but online videos raised questions about those claims.

Video footages that have gone viral revealed that the missiles fired by Saudi Arabia's Patriot air defense systems malfunctioned and veered off the specified course to make a U-turn and come back to hit the residential areas in the Saudi capital. The incident killed Egyptian Abdolmotaleb Ahmed Hussein Ali and wounded a number of other civilians.

Another appears to detonate shortly after being launched in the Saudi capital.

Saudi Arabia's Information Ministry did not respond to requests for comment Monday. However, the videos appear to show the kingdom being yet another country overstating the capability of the missile defense system, a tradition dating back to the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

 

The Saudi military said it intercepted seven ballistic missiles fired by the Yemeni army at the kingdom, three of them targeting Riyadh, two targeting Jazan and one apiece targeting Najran and Khamis Mushait.

The Saudi-owned satellite news channel Al Arabiya aired footage that it said showed Patriot missile batteries firing at the incoming Yemeni missiles in Riyadh. One Patriot missile appears to explode seconds after being launched, drawing a shout from a bystander as flaming fragments rain down on the ground.

The Saudi military did not acknowledge the apparent missile malfunctions. Saudi Col. Turki al-Maliki only claimed in a statement that "all seven ballistic missiles were intercepted and destroyed."

The Yemenis dismissed the Saudi claims saying that the missiles hit their targets.

[Old_Observer]

Yemenis destroy Saudi-led missile system in Ta'izz with ballistic missile: Report

Sat Feb 10, 2018 09:44:52

The Yemeni army, supported by allied fighters from the Houthi Ansarullah movement, has managed to successfully destroy a missile system run by Saudi Arabia’s mercenary forces in Yemen’s southwestern province of Ta'izz, a report says.

 

Press TV-- Brigadier Aziz Rashed, the deputy spokesman for the Houthi-allied army, told Yemen's Arabic-language al-Masirah television network that the Friday attack completely destroyed the American-made MIM-104F (PAC-3) missile system installed near the port city of Mokha.

He further said that the missile launched by Yemeni forces hit the target with high precision and totally destroyed the advanced air shield. He added that the attack had paved the way for a larger operation to clean Yemen’s western coast of the presence of the Saudi-led forces.

There was no immediate comment from Saudi officials on the missile attack.

On February 1, al-Masirah reported that Yemeni forces army forces, backed by Popular Committees, had launched a locally-designed Qaher M-2 ballistic missile against the Om al-Rish military base, run by the Saudi-led military coalition, in Yemen’s central province of Ma’rib.

Yemeni forces’ missile attacks are part of a national retaliation campaign against the Saudi aggression.

Since March 2015, the Saudi regime, together with a coalition of its allies, has been heavily bombarding Yemen as part of a brutal campaign against its impoverished southern neighbor. It has been attempting unsuccessfully to reinstall Yemen’s former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh.

The Saudi campaign has killed at least 13,600 people since its onset. Furthermore, much of the country’s infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and factories, has been reduced to rubble in the Saudi war.

Famine and outbreaks of cholera and diphtheria are other results of the Saudi-led war.

Besides defending Yemen against the Saudi aggression, Ansarullah has also been running state affairs in the capital, Sana’a, in the absence of an effective administration.

[Old_Observer]

Social media activists in Israel and Saudi Arabia have been criticizing the weak performance of their armies' air defense systems since Sunday night, saying that Riyadh and Tel Aviv have been lying when they were bragging about their air defense power.

The Iron Dome missile defense system in Israel was apparently mistakenly activated by automatic gunfire within Gaza on Sunday, sending an unnecessary barrage of interceptors into the skies, the army said.

Also, one video appeared to show a Saudi Patriot missile launch on Sunday night go rapidly wrong, with the missile changing course midair, crashing into a neighborhood in Riyadh and exploding. Another appeared to detonate shortly after being launched in the Saudi capital. The two were fired to intercept the Yemeni army missiles.

Following the incidents, the Israeli social media activists blasted the weak performance of the air defense system called by Tel Aviv as Iron Dome, asking how the multi-million-dollar defense shield has failed to recognize beams of Hamas artillery drills in Gaza from a real rocket attack and sent Israeli people to shelters.

An activist tweeted Sunday was a bad day for the technology of the western defense systems. 2 Saudi Patriot missiles failed to hit the target and the Iron Dome failed to say the difference between missile and beams.

Meantime, Global Observer news website described the incidents as big failure for Saudi Arabia and Israel, noting that the Iron Dome fired several missiles worth of $50,000 in reaction to the light of artillery fire in Hamas drills and the Saudi Patriot defense shield targeted Riyadh instead of the Yemeni missiles.

Sunday night's launch saw one Egyptian killed and two others wounded in Riyadh by a missile fragment, marking the first casualties in the Saudi capital since the war against Yemen began. 

Saudi Arabia has been striking Yemen since March 2015 to restore power to fugitive president Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh. The Saudi-led aggression has so far killed at least 15,700 Yemenis, including hundreds of women and children.

Despite Riyadh's claims that it is bombing the positions of the Ansarullah fighters, Saudi bombers are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

According to several reports, the Saudi-led air campaign against Yemen has driven the impoverished country towards humanitarian disaster, as Saudi Arabia's deadly campaign prevented the patients from travelling abroad for treatment and blocked the entry of medicine into the war-torn country.

Yemen is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis with more than 22 million people in need and is seeing a spike in needs, fueled by ongoing conflict, a collapsing economy and diminished social services and livelihoods.

A UN panel has compiled a detailed report of civilian casualties caused by the Saudi military and its allies during their war against Yemen, saying the Riyadh-led coalition has used precision-guided munitions in its raids on civilian targets.