SANAA, Yemen (AP) – A large explosion hit the airport in the southern Yemeni city of Aden on Wednesday, shortly after a plane carrying the newly formed cabinet landed there, security officials said. At least 25 people were killed and 110 were injured in the blast.
The internationally recognized Yemeni government said Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, fired four ballistic missiles at the airport. Rebel officials did not respond to calls from The Associated Press for comment. No one on the government plane was injured.
Officials later reported another blast near a city palace where cabinet members were transferred after the airport attack. Later, the Saudi-led coalition fired a bomb-laden drone that tried to head for the palace, according to the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya television channel.
The reshuffle of the cabinet was seen as an important step towards closing a dangerous rift between the government of the opposing Yemeni president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, and the southern separatists backed by the United Arab Emirates. The Hadi government and the separatists are nominal allies of the Yemeni civil war that for years has pitted the Saudi-led military coalition, with U.S. support, against the Houthis, who control most of northern Yemen, as well. as the country’s capital, Sanaa.
PA footage from the airport site showed members of the government delegation disembarking as the blast shook the ground. Many ministers ran back inside the plane or ran down the stairs seeking refuge.
Thick smoke rose into the air from near the terminal building. Site officials said they saw bodies lying on the tarmac and anywhere else at the airport.
Yemen’s Communications Minister Naguib al-Awg, who was on the plane, told the AP he heard two explosions, suggesting they were drone attacks. Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed and the others were quickly moved from the airport to Mashiq Palace.
Military and security forces sealed off the area around the palace.
“It would have been a disaster if the plane had been bombed,” said al-Awg, who insisted the plane was the target of the attack as it was supposed to land first.
Prime Minister Saeed tweeted that he and his cabinet were safe and unharmed. He described the blasts as a “cowardly terrorist act” that was part of the war against “the Yemeni state and our great people.”
Foreign Minister Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak blamed the Houthis for the attacks. His ministry said in a later statement that the rebels fired four ballistic missiles at the airport and launched drone attacks on the palace, the cabinet headquarters. They provided no evidence.
Health Minister Qasem Buhaibuh said in a tweet that the attacks at the airport killed at least 25 people and injured 110 more people, suggesting the death toll could rise further as some of the injuries were serious.
Images shared on social media from the scene showed rubble and broken glass near the airport building and at least two lifeless bodies, one of them charred, lying on the ground. In another image, a man tries to help another man in torn clothes get up from the ground.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said three of its workers were killed in the airport blast: two Yemeni nationals and one Rwandan. Three more workers were injured. ICRC workers were at the airport traveling with other civilians when the blast took place, he said.
“This is a tragic day for the ICRC and for the people of Yemen,” said Dominik Stillhart, the ICRC’s director of operations.
Yemeni television Belqees said its reporter Adeeb al-Ganabi also died in the airport explosion. Information Minister Moammer al-Iryani said at least ten other journalists were injured.
A statement from Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said the “Secretary-General condemns the deplorable attack on Aden airport shortly after the arrival of the newly formed Yemeni cabinet,” which killed and injured dozens of people. ”
Anwar Gargash, UAE’s foreign minister, said the attack on Aden airport was aimed at destroying the power-sharing agreement between the internationally recognized Yemeni government and the separatists. from the south.
U.S. Ambassador to Yemen Christopher Henzel said the U.S. condemned the attacks in Aden. “We stand by the Yemeni people as they fight for peace and support the new Yemeni government as it works towards a better future for all Yemenis,” he said.
Egypt, Jordan and other Arab and Western nations also condemned the airport attack.
Yemeni ministers were returning to Aden from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, after being sworn in last week as part of a reshuffle following a deal with separatists. The internationally recognized Yemeni government has worked mainly since the self-imposed exile in Riyadh during the country’s civil war for years.
The Saudi ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed al-Jaber, described the attack as a “cowardly terrorist act aimed at the Yemeni people, their security and stability.”
Despite “disappointment and confusion caused by those who believe in death and destruction,” the peace deal between the government and southern separatists “will go ahead,” he said.
Hadi, in exile in Saudi Arabia, announced the reshuffle of the Cabinet earlier this month.
Appointing a new government was part of a power-sharing agreement between the Hadi, backed by Saudi Arabia, and the pro-independence Southern Transitional Council with support from the Emirates, an umbrella group of militias that sought to restore an independent southern Yemen. , which existed from 1967 until unification in 1990.
The blast highlights the dangers facing the Hadi government in the port city, the scene of bloody fighting between internationally recognized government forces and separatists backed in the United Arab Emirates.
In a video message posted later on his Twitter account, Saeed, the Yemeni prime minister, said his government was in Aden “to stay.” The city has been the seat of the Hadi government since the Houthi rebels reached the capital Sanaa in 2014.
Last year, the Houthis launched a missile in a military parade of newly graduated fighters from a militia loyal to the UAE at a military base in Aden, killing dozens.
In 2015, then-Yemeni Prime Minister Khaled Bahah and members of his government survived a missile attack, blamed on the Houthis, of a government-used Aden hotel.
Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, has been embroiled in civil war since 2014, when Houthis dominated the north and Sanaa. The following year, a Saudi-led military coalition intervened to wage war against the Houthis and to restore the Hadi government.
The war has killed more than 112,000 people and caused the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Maggie Michael in Cairo contributed to this report.