A US Navy F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bomber crashed into the water from the deck of the aircraft carrier Harry S. Truman on Tuesday.
The American fighter jet, worth $60 million, fell from the deck of the aircraft carrier in the Arabian Sea. The US Navy command reported that the cause was the incorrect actions of the tow truck pulling the aircraft before take-off. The tow tractor fell into the water along with the fighter jet, but the driver was rescued. There was no pilot in the cockpit.
CNN has a different version: the plane crashed into the Red Sea as a result of a sharp manoeuvre by the aircraft carrier, which was trying to escape a Houthi attack. The fighter jet sank.
The second version seems more likely, as the Houthis had previously announced an attack on this American warship in response to strikes on Yemen.
Earlier, Al-masirah reported that Yemeni Houthis had attacked the Harry Truman, forcing it to retreat from its previous location.
On Monday, at least 30 people were killed in a US strike on a migrant detention centre in the city of Saada in north-western Yemen. The leader of the Yemeni rebel movement Ansar Allah, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, said that the US armed forces had carried out at least 260 strikes on Yemeni territory over the past week.
The USS Harry S. Truman has been involved in other incidents in the past. In February, the aircraft carrier collided with a merchant ship off the coast of Egypt, and in December, one of its fighter jets was accidentally shot down by a missile from the destroyer USS Gettysburg. Both pilots ejected and survived.
