The General People’s Congress (GPC) considered on Sunday a meeting held by party members in Sana’a as “void,” and said that “most members of the general committee and the party’s permanent committee were not in Sana’a to attend the meeting, whose decisions became illegal.” The political party, previously led by former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was killed in December 2017, described the step as an “attempt to hijack and control the GPC with an aim to justify the policies of robberies, crimes and killings imposed by Houthi militias on party members.” A meeting of some GPC members held on Sunday in Sana’a in the absence of high-ranking party officials, said that Sadeq Amin Abou Rass, a former agriculture minister, had succeeded Saleh. The meeting angered party members and activists for supporting Houthi militias and for giving up on Saleh’s comrades, also ignoring the reprisals led by the militias against GPC members in the past weeks. GPC issued a statement on Sunday saying the decision of appointing Abou Rass as Saleh’s successor was “meaningless.” Meanwhile, the Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen announced that two pilots were evacuated from operations area following a joint search and rescue operation implemented after their fighter jet crashed due to a technical failure. Colonel Turki Al-Malki, Spokesman of the Joint Coalition Forces, disclosed that a Saudi Royal Air Force fighter jet was exposed to a technical failure after implementing one of the operational tasks to support legitimacy in Yemen, which resulted in its crash inside the operation area with no injuries to the aircrafts crew. "The Arab Coalition Forces Command implemented a private joint operation in participation of air and land forces to evacuate two pilots to Saudi Arabia,” the spokesman added.