SANAA (Dispatches) — Yemen’s Ansarullah movement said Monday it shot down another American-made MQ-9 Reaper drone, with video circulating online showing what appeared to be a surface-to-air missile strike and flaming wreckage strewn across the ground.
The U.S. military said it was aware of the claimed downing of a drone over the country’s southwestern Dhamar province, without elaborating.
Other videos showed Ansarullah fighters gathered around the flaming wreckage, a propeller similar to those used by the armed drone visible in the flames. One attempted to pick up a piece of the metal before dropping it due to the heat.
Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, a Yemeni military spokesperson, identified the drone as an MQ-9. He said it was the third downed by the Yemeni forces in a week. He said the Yemeni forces used a locally produced missile.
Reapers, which cost around $30 million apiece, can fly at altitudes up to 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) and have an endurance of up to 24 hours before needing to land. The aircraft have been flown by both the U.S. military and the CIA over Yemen for years.
Yemeni forces have targeted more than 80 Israeli-linked vessels with missiles and drones since the occupying regime’s war on Gaza started in October. They seized one vessel and sank two in the campaign that has also killed four sailors.  
Yemen maintains that it targets ships linked to Israel, the U.S. or the UK to force an end to the Zionist regime’s campaign of death and destruction in Gaza.  
The downing came as Yemen hit the center of the occupied territories near Tel Aviv with a hypersonic ballistic missile which shook the Israeli entity. 
The operation by the long-range missile sparked a fire and forced about 2 million settlers to scurry for shelter. 
Saree said Yemen “targeted a military position of the Israeli enemy in the Jaffa area” with a “new hypersonic ballistic missile” that travelled 2,040 km (1270 miles) in just 11 1/2 minutes. He said Israel’s defense system failed to intercept the missile.
“A Yemeni missile reached Israel after ’20 missiles failed to intercept’ it,” said Nasruddin Amer, the head of Yemen’s Sabaa news agency. 
Hypersonic missiles travel much faster than traditional ballistic or cruise missiles, making them extremely difficult to detect, track, or intercept by current defense systems.
They travel at speeds greater than Mach 5, which is five times the speed of sound (approximately 3,800 miles per hour or 6,100 kilometers per hour). 
Unlike ballistic missiles, which follow a predictable parabolic trajectory, hypersonic missiles can maneuver during flight, making them highly agile and harder to predict. This allows them to evade missile defense systems more effectively.
Additionally, hypersonic missiles can fly at lower altitudes compared to ballistic missiles, often in the upper atmosphere, which makes them harder to detect by radar systems designed to track higher altitude ballistic trajectories.
Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on Monday congratulated Yemen for the missile strike on Israel.

 “I congratulate you on your success in reaching the depth of the enemy entity,” Sinwar said in a letter to Ansarullah leader Abdel-Malek al-Houthi.
He said resistance movements in Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen would “break the will of Israel” as he stressed Hamas’ preparation for a long war against Israel. 
“We have prepared ourselves to fight a long battle of attrition,” Sinwar said. 
“I assure you that the resistance is fine. We have prepared ourselves to fight a long battle of attrition,” he added.