SANAA, Yemen (AP) – A large-scale explosion hit the southern Yemeni airport in 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 injured in the blast.
The internationally recognized Yemeni government has said Iran-backed Houthi rebels have launched four ballistic missiles at the airport. Rebel officials did not respond to phone calls from the Associated Press for comment. No one on the government plane was injured.
Officials later reported another blast near a palace in the city, where cabinet members were transferred following the airport attack. The Saudi-led coalition later shot down a bomb-laden drone that tried to target the palace, according to Saudi Arabia’s Al-Arabiya television channel.
The reshuffle of the Cabinet was seen as a major step towards closing a dangerous rift between the government of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and the southern separatists, backed by the United Arab Emirates. Hadi’s government and separatists are nominal allies in the Yemeni civil war pitting the US-backed Saudi-led military coalition against the Houthis, which controls most of northern Yemen, and the country’s capital, Sanaa.
PA footage at the airport showed members of the government delegation disembarking as the blast shook the ground. Many ministers rushed back to the plane or ran up the stairs, seeking shelter.
Thick smoke rose in the air near the terminal building. Officials at the scene said they saw bodies lying on the tarmac and elsewhere at the airport.
Yemeni Communications Minister Naguib al-Awg, who was on the plane, told the AP that he heard two explosions, suggesting drone strikes. Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed and the others were rushed from the airport to Mashiq Palace.
Military and security forces isolated the area around the palace.
“It would have been a disaster if the plane had been bombed,” al-Awg said, insisting that the plane be the target of the attack, as it should have landed earlier.
Prime Minister Saeed wrote on Twitter that he and his cabinet are safe and unharmed. He called the blasts 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 Houthi 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’s headquarters. They did not provide evidence.
Health Minister Qasem Buhaibuh said in a tweet that the attacks at the airport killed at least 25 people and injured another 110, suggesting the death toll could rise further as some injuries are serious.
Images shared on social media on the spot showed debris and broken glass scattered near the airport building and at least two dead bodies, one of them charred, lying on the ground. In another picture, a man tries to help another man whose clothes were torn to rise from the ground.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said three of its workers had been killed in the airport blast: two Yemeni nationals and a Rwandan. Three other workers were injured. ICRC workers were at the airport in transit with other civilians when the blast occurred, 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 was also killed in the airport blast. Information Minister Moammer al-Iryani said at least ten other journalists were injured.
A statement from Farhan Haq, UN Secretary-General’s spokesman Antonio Guterres, said that “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, the UAE’s foreign minister, said the attack on Aden airport was meant to destroy the power-sharing agreement between the internationally recognized Yemeni government and southern separatists.
US Ambassador to Yemen Christopher Henzel said the US condemned the attacks in Aden. “We stand with the Yemeni people as they strive for peace and support the new Yemeni government as it works for a better future for all Yemenis,” he said.
Egypt, Jordan and other Arab and Western nations have 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 an agreement with the separatists. The internationally recognized Yemeni government has been working mainly on self-imposed exile in Riyadh during the civil war for years.
The Saudi ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed al-Jaber, described the attack as a “cowardly terrorist act targeting the Yemeni people, their security and stability.”
Despite the “disappointment and confusion caused by those who create death and destruction,” the peace agreement between the government and the separatists in the south “will continue,” he said.
Hadi, in exile in Saudi Arabia, announced the reshuffle of the Cabinet earlier this month.
The appointment of a new government was part of a power-sharing agreement between Hadi, backed by Saudi Arabia, and the separatist Transitional Council backed by the Emirates, an umbrella group of militias trying to restore an independent southern Yemen that has existed. from 1967 until unification in 1990.
The blast underscores 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 on his Twitter account, Yeed, the Yemeni prime minister, said his government was in Aden “to stay.” The city has been the seat of the Hadi government since Houthi rebels overran the capital Sanaa in 2014.
Last year, the Houthis fired a rocket at a military parade of newly acquitted fighters of a loyal UAE militia at a military base in Aden, killing dozens.
In 2015, then-Yemeni Prime Minister Khaled Bahah and members of his government survived a rocket attack, accused by Houthis, on a government-used Aden hotel.
Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, has been in the civil war since 2014, when the Houthis overtook the north and Sanaa. The following year, a Saudi-led military coalition intervened to wage war against the Houthis and restore Hadi’s government to power.
The war 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 of Cairo contributed to the report.