A Saudi warplane from the coalition battling rebels in Yemen crashed on Sunday because of "technical failure", the coalition and state media said, adding that both crew were rescued. The plane "had a technical failure at 15:40 (1840 GMT) and crashed... in an area of operations" in Yemen, Turki al-Maliki, the spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition, told AFP.

He said the two crew members were rescued unharmed and returned to Saudi Arabia. Maliki gave no further details. A coalition statement released later by the official Saudi Press Agency said the warplane that crashed was Saudi and that the operation to rescue the crew involved ground forces. More than 8,750 people have been killed since the coalition intervened in Yemen, according to the World Health Organisation.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2018