Saudi Arabia just lost a helicopter crew and the Houthis say they did it
3 hours ago · 19 October 2026Share
A Little Bird helicopter operated by the Saudi Arabian National Guard. File photo. Qrmoo3 · CC BY-SA 4.0
A Saudi military helicopter just went down near the Yemen border.
Both officers on board are dead.
And Yemen's Houthis say they're the ones who brought it down.
So here's what happened. The AH-6i helicopter crashed in Najran province, inside Saudi territory, earlier today. Maj. Gen. Turki al-Maliki, who speaks for the Saudi-led coalition, says it was a technical malfunction. Nothing more. The coalition hasn't named the two officers.
But here's the thing. The Houthis got there first.
A day before the coalition even spoke, Yahya Saree, the Houthi military spokesperson, said his side shot down a Saudi helicopter near Najran while it was attacking Houthi positions on the border. Most reports have him calling it an Apache. But one outlet, South Korea's SBS, quotes him naming the AH-6i specifically, and saying it was hit by a surface-to-air missile.
So the two sides can't even agree on what kind of aircraft this was. Let alone what hit it.
The Houthis have put out video. They say it shows the strike itself — a small helicopter, matching the AH-6i, hit mid-air by what looks like an Iranian-designed loitering munition. Part of the 358 family. The Houthis call it the Saqr.
And here's where it gets shaky. That description comes from one outlet, Defence Blog. A second site's version of the story looks copied from the same report, not reported separately. RT saw the same footage and described something else entirely — a black-and-white clip of a glowing object hit by a projectile. RT says it isn't even clear the object is a helicopter, or that the clip is from this incident at all. Reuters says it could not verify the footage either.
So three things are still wide open. Whether the Houthi claim and the coalition's crash are even the same event. Whether the video shows a helicopter being hit at all. And what, if anything, actually hit it.
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The Empty Quarter desert near Najran, Saudi Arabia. File photo. Prof. Mortel · CC BY 2.0
Al-Maliki gave his answer on social media. He posted a photo of a row of Apache helicopters and says quote "you claim to have shot it down, but it will enter the battlefield soon".
That's the coalition calling the claim false, without using the word.
A quick word on the aircraft. The AH-6i is a light attack and reconnaissance helicopter. Boeing built it, based on the Little Bird used by US special forces. It carries a crew of two. Saudi Arabia's National Guard bought about two dozen of them in the mid-2010s.
Now the bigger picture. This is the first coalition military death since the war with the Houthis restarted in July. Three months of fighting, and Saudi forces hadn't lost anyone. Until today.
And it lands in the middle of the worst run of attacks Saudi Arabia has had in years. About a week before the crash, a Houthi strike hit Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport. 13 people were killed — the deadliest attack on Saudi soil in more than a decade. One outlet puts the toll at 12. The National reports the Houthis have hit that same airport 20 times since the start of October.
Najran itself has been under repeated Houthi drone and missile fire for weeks. On the same day as the helicopter crash, the coalition said it intercepted two Houthi ballistic missiles aimed at Khamis Mushait, in the country's southwest. Saudi Civil Defence had issued danger alerts for Riyadh, Abha and Khamis Mushait shortly before, then said the danger had passed.
So why is any of this happening now? A four-year truce broke down last month, after the Houthis took the port city of Mokha and the island of Perim, which sits in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Since then, the Houthis have hit Saudi tankers in the Red Sea and oil facilities. The coalition has hit back with repeated air raids on Houthi territory.
Nobody outside the two sides can say right now who's telling the truth about the helicopter.
What's certain is this. Two Saudi officers are dead. And both sides are already using their deaths to make the case that they're winning this war.
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