Saudi helicopter crash in Najran kills two officers amid Houthi missile barrage

A Saudi National Guard reconnaissance helicopter crashed in the southwestern Najran region near the Yemen border on Sunday, killing its two-officer crew, the Saudi-led coalition said.

Maj. Gen. Turki Al-Maliki, spokesman for the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen, said in a statement posted on X that an AH-6i reconnaissance helicopter belonging to the Ministry of National Guard went down inside Saudi territory because of a technical malfunction.

“The helicopter crashed due to a technical malfunction, resulting in the martyrdom of its two-officer crew,” Al-Maliki said, offering condolences to the victims’ families. Arab News reported that Reuters also confirmed the crash in a brief statement on Sunday.

The crash came as Saudi Arabia remained on heightened alert amid renewed Houthi attacks. Earlier on Sunday, coalition air defences intercepted and destroyed two ballistic missiles launched towards Khamis Mushayt and a drone targeting the Riyadh region, Al-Maliki said. Residents in Riyadh and Khamis Mushayt received mobile-phone alerts from the General Directorate of Civil Defence warning of a “hostile aerial threat” and urging people to stay indoors.

Separately, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree claimed on Saturday that Houthi forces had shot down a Saudi Apache helicopter near Najran while it carried out what he called “hostile operations” against Houthi positions, according to the Houthi-run Saba news agency, as reported by Anadolu Agency. Saree’s claim could not be independently verified.

It was unclear whether the two sides were describing the same aircraft: the coalition identified its downed helicopter as an AH-6i reconnaissance helicopter, while the Houthi spokesman described an Apache.