SANAA, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Yemen's Houthi rebels said they hit a warplane belonging to the Saudi-led coalition while flying over the Yemeni northern province of Saada on Wednesday.
"Our air defense forces fired a missile and hit an F-15 plane over Saada," the dominant group said in a statement posted on Saba news agency.
Meanwhile, spokesman of the Arab coalition forces, Colonel Turki al-Maliki said the plane was hit at 15:48 local time (1248 GMT) by a missile fired from Saada airport camp, but caused no serious damage and the plane managed to return successfully.
Al-Maliki said the missile was "not included in the Yemeni government arms arsenal ... and that this is another prove of Iranian weapons smuggling to the Shiite rebels in Yemen."
Iran has long denied smuggling weapons to the Yemeni rebels.
On Jan. 7, the Houthi rebels said they shot down a fighter jet of the Saudi-led military coalition, though Saudi media reported it only crashed due to a technical problem.
The Saudi-led coalition has been conducting regular surveillance operations and airstrikes on the Yemeni territories controlled by the Houthi rebels as part of its war against the rebels in Yemen that began in 2015.
The coalition began a military air campaign in March 2015 to roll back Houthis' gains and reinstate exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his government to power.
The coalition has also imposed an air and sea blockade on Yemen to prevent weapons smuggling from reaching the Houthis, who seized the capital Sanaa and most of the northern Yemeni provinces.
UN statistics show more than 10,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed since the coalition intervened in the Yemeni civil war.
