Rebels 'down' Yemeni plane as battle rages

Shiite rebels said yesterday they shot down a Yemeni combat aircraft on the Saudi border nearly three months into a widening war between the insurgents and government forces.

Jet fighters from Saudi Arabia, which entered the fray on Tuesday after the rebels seized two of its villages and killed a border guard, stepped up bombing raids against rebel positions.

The kingdom said three of its soldiers have been killed and another four have gone missing since the fighting erupted on the rugged border, also claiming the lives of an unknown number of Yemenis.

The rebels said however that besides capturing several Saudi soldiers, they had also downed a Yemeni government aircraft.

"Our anti-aircraft batteries have shot down a military aircraft which was bombing the village of Razeh" close to the Saudi border, rebel spokesman Mohammad Abdessalam told AFP.

A military source in Sanaa acknowledged a Russian Sukhoi bomber had crashed because of "mechanical problems."

It is the third combat aircraft the Zaidi rebels claim to have downed since the launch of the government offensive against them on August 11. Yemen says all of the incidents were due to mechanical reasons.

The Zaidi rebels, who were forced towards the mountainous border with Saudi Arabia by Yemeni troops, told AFP "the Saudis are continuing their air and land shelling of Yemen territory near the border with Saudi Arabia."

An defiant statement on their website said earlier that "with Allah's help, the Saudi tyrannical advance into Yemen's territory has been defeated.