Yemen's Aden airport attack: What you need to know
Siti Farhana Sheikh Yahya
December 31, 2020 18:54 MYT
December 31, 2020 18:54 MYT
Dust rises after explosions hit Aden airport, upon the arrival of the newly-formed Yemeni government in Aden, Yemen December 30, 2020. REUTERS/Fawaz Salman
- LARGE explosions struck the airport in the southern Yemeni city of Aden on Wednesday.
- The plane that landed there was carrying the newly formed Cabinet arriving from Saudi Arabia.
- At least 26 people were killed and 50 wounded in the blast.
- Officials also reported another explosion near the place the Cabinet members were transferred following the airport attack.
- Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed tweeted that he and his Cabinet were safe and called the explosions a “cowardly terrorist act”.
- Foreign Minister Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak blamed the Houthis for the attacks. The ministry released statement saying that the rebels fired four ballistic missiles at the airport and launched drone attacks at the palace where the Cabinet's headquarters are.
- Rebel Houthis denied responsibility for the attacks.
- Among the casualties were three International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) staff members who were killed in the airport attack.
- Egyptian Foreign Ministry condemned the attacks as "despicable terrorist acts" in a statement while Jordan’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Deifallah Fayez stressed Jordan's denouncement of this "cowardly terror attack,".
- The UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, and the UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, have strongly condemned the attack as well.
- Yemen has been riddled with conflict that escalated in 2015 when a Saudi-led coalition of Arab states launched a military operation to defeat the Houthis and restore President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi's rule.
- As of early December, over 230,000 Yemenis have died due to the war, 131, 000 of whom were through indirect causes such as lack of food, health services and infrastructure. Over 3,000 children have been killed, and 1,500 civilian casualties have been reported in the first nine months of this year.