Qatar denies holding Iranian pilots

Qatar denied on Saturday that it was holding Iranian pilots, saying they had violated Qatari airspace in March and had failed to respond to attempts to contact them. A Qatari foreign ministry spokesperson said on X that search and rescue teams later found the remains of one of the pilots and that it had contacted Iran to coordinate a handover. The spokesperson said Tehran had yet to respond to an invitation to review details of its operations. The statement came after Iranian state news agency IRNA cited a senior military official as saying three Iranian pilots had been captured alive by Qatari forces after ejecting from fighter jets during a combat mission targeting a military base in Qatar. The official called on the International Committee of the Red Cross to follow up on their fate. IRNA said the mission took place during Iran's response to U.S. and Israeli attacks that started on February 28, which Tehran says were launched in part from bases in Gulf Arab states. Qatar said

it took measures to defend its territory after the pilots entered its airspace and did not respond to attempts to communicate with them. The U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran in February triggered a wider regional war, with Tehran striking targets in Israel and U.S. military facilities in the Gulf.