The Houthis’ Qasef-1 multirole UAV
The southern Saudi airports of Abha and Jizan were targeted by suicide drones in the late hours of June 15 in a coordinated attack by the Houthis.
Brig. Gen. Yahya Sari, a spokesman for the Yemeni group, said that several Qasef-2K suicide unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) struck a drone command and control center in Jizan airport and Abha airport’s main fuel station.
“The operations achieved their goals with high precision, thanks God, rendering both airports out of service,” the al-Masirah TV quoted the Houthis’ spokesman as saying.
The Qasef-2k is a slightly upgraded variant of the Qasef-1 UAV, which is a copy of the Iranian Ababil-2. The new suicide UAV is armed with a heavy high-explosive fragmentation (HE-FRAG) warhead that explodes 20m over the target.
From its side, the Saudi-led coalition said that the Royal Saudi Air Defense Force (RSADF) had intercepted a “ballistic missile” over the Kingdom’s southern region. The coalition didn’t comment on the drone attack, which usually means that it was successful.
AThe bha airport was attacked twice by the Houthis earlier this week. The first attack was carried out with what the Yemeni group described as a “cruise missile”, while five suicide drones were used in the second attack.
The repeated attacks by the Houthis on Saudi Arabia’s airports are a clear example of the Yemeni group’s growing offensive capabilities.
