“The operation lasted for more than 8 hours”, al-Turki said, adding that five Saudi border guards were killed while big losses were registered in the ranks of infiltrators before Saudi forces defeated them.
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The official SPA news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying that Saudi troops confronted “enemy elements of armed groups who tried to infiltrate in several places”.
The Boeing AH-64 Apache aircraft was conducting an operation over a district in the oil-rich Yemeni province, located 250 kilometers (150 miles) east of the capital, Sana’a, late on Monday when it was struck by the Yemeni forces, Press TV cited al-Masirah as reporting.
Elsewhere, at least 80 pro-government and rebel troops have been killed in fighting since last week in northwest Yemen near the border with Saudi Arabia, military sources said Monday.
Yemeni loyalists are supported by a Saudi-led coalition that has been battling the Iran-backed rebels since March 2015.
“At least 48 (Shiite Huthi) rebels and forces loyal to (ex-president) Ali Abdullah Saleh were killed” in the fighting, said one of the sources.
The Saudi forces identified the slain pilots as Captain Ayman Alfaifi and First Lieutenant Mohammed Hassan.
Kuwait has hosted Yemen peace talks since April, but the negotiations have failed to make any progress and the Gulf emirate on Thursday gave the warring parties a 15-day ultimatum to strike a deal or leave the country.
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More than 6,400 Yemenis, a lot of them civilians, have been killed since last March, and the fighting has driven 2.8 million Yemenis from their homes.
