Missile targets Aden airport as Houthis say they hit a coalition operations room

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ADEN, Yemen — A ballistic missile targeted Aden International Airport on Wednesday, Yemen’s military said. The Houthis said they had struck a coalition operations room in the city instead.

The missile hit the airport runway in the morning, shortly after two civilian flights had taken off, the transport ministry said.

Departing flights were cancelled and the airport was evacuated, according to the ministry.

It said this was the fourth time the facility had been hit in the recent fighting.

Al-Arabiya reported an explosion and smoke at the site, citing its correspondent in the city. A police official reported smoke rising near the airport.

Al Jazeera reporters in Aden said a missile targeted the airport that morning. They did not say whether it hit the site or was intercepted.

Accounts of the target differ.

The Houthis said the missile had hit a military camp in Aden rather than the airport.

Yahya Saree, the group’s military spokesman, said its forces had targeted the Saudi-led coalition’s “military operation room at the Badr Camp in Aden with a ballistic missile”.

“The strike was precise and direct,” Saree said.

There was no immediate comment from the Yemeni government or the coalition on that claim.

Yemen Herald could not independently establish what the missile struck.

Colonel Majed Abdullah al-Nazili, spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, said the group “pours its terrorism and aggression onto the lives of citizens” when it is broken on the battlefield. The Houthis reject that characterisation.

Al-Nazili said three missiles hit al-Rayyan Airport in Mukalla the same day.

A military official told Agence France-Presse that the Houthis had used “missiles and drones to target a military base housing forces from the coalition at Al-Rayyan airport”. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mukalla, the main city of Hadramawt, is held by the internationally recognised government.

The group did not publish a claim for the Mukalla strike.

Al-Nazili said another attack struck a sponge factory in the Beir Basha area of Taiz.

No injuries were reported in either airport attack.

Saree also denied that the group had carried out operations deep inside Saudi territory.

Turki al-Malki, the coalition spokesman, said four drones had been intercepted over Medina and the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, and a fifth over the Eastern Province later. He did not say who had launched them.

Aden is the seat of Yemen’s internationally recognised government and of the Presidential Leadership Council.

The airport was struck earlier in October. Two missiles were fired at it on October 16, Yemen’s information minister, Moammar al-Eryani, said.

Al-Eryani said the missiles landed near the runway, about 500 metres from an aircraft that was preparing to take off. He said all passengers and crew were safe.

He called the attacks on the airport “a grave violation of international laws and norms”.

The Houthis made no claim on the airport that day. In a statement attributed to a military source, they said they had attacked “the Saudi forces’ command headquarters in the Badr camp in Aden province” and a weapons depot.

The group has now named the Badr camp in both sets of claims.

That strike came a day after a missile attack on Yemen’s presidential palace in Aden, which was reported as deadly. No toll for it was published.

Iran’s foreign ministry has rejected Saudi assertions that it backs the attacks.

Fighting resumed last month, ending the calm that had followed the 2022 truce between the Houthis and the government in Aden.

The Houthis declared a naval blockade on Saudi-linked shipping in the Red Sea in early August. They seized the port city of Mokha on September 10 and took Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandab Strait the following day.

An attack on the Tanzania-flagged Tihamah killed four seafarers on August 11.

The UN Secretary-General reported three vessels attacked and four seafarers killed between August 9 and September 9.

US officials met the group in Oman on September 16, according to reports at the time. The Houthis said then that they would not target US or Israeli vessels, or commercial ships other than Saudi-linked ones.

The Security Council condemned the escalation in a press statement on September 18 and demanded that it end.

Hans Grundberg, the UN special envoy for Yemen, briefed the Council at an emergency meeting on September 10.

Houthi missile and drone attacks hit several locations in southern Saudi Arabia on September 8, injuring 73 people and damaging energy facilities, according to reports at the time.

A fire broke out at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh in mid-September. Saudi Arabia said on September 16 that it had intercepted a drone heading toward Mecca.

Government forces have been trying to halt the group’s push into the Kahboub mountains. They claimed control of Mount Qarfan in Taiz on September 22.

Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on September 24 that at least 125 civilians had been killed or wounded since early August. He said 73 UN staff remained detained by the Houthis.

The UN refugee agency recorded about 3,000 people crossing to Djibouti.

Council members are split on how to respond. The United States, Britain and France favour more pressure on the group and on Iran, while Russia and China urge restraint and a negotiated settlement.

The Council’s sanctions regime for Yemen expires on November 14.