Missiles put Aden airport runway out of service as Houthis call for evacuation
Yemen Herald News 
ADEN, Yemen — Two ballistic missiles hit Aden International Airport on Wednesday, damaging the runway and halting civilian flights, Yemen’s transport ministry said.
The first missile landed at about 1 p.m. local time and the second about two hours later, the ministry said.
The runway was put out of service and civilian aircraft could not land, according to the ministry and local accounts of the damage.
The ministry held the Houthis responsible and said the strikes endangered passengers, flight crews and airport staff.
It said continued strikes posed a serious threat to the safety of civil aviation, and asked the international community and the International Civil Aviation Organization to act.
Yahya Saree, the Houthi military spokesman, renewed a call for the airport to be evacuated immediately.
He said a Saudi military cargo plane on the ground there was carrying weapons “to kill the sons of the Yemeni people.”
Saudi authorities did not comment on the claim. Yemen Herald could not verify it.
A local police official told Agence France-Presse that a missile fell inside the airport perimeter shortly before the evacuation call. The official spoke on condition of anonymity.
A Saudi military aircraft was at the airport when the missile landed, the official said. It was not hit and took off soon afterwards.
Residents told Reuters they heard explosions in Aden before the Houthi warning was issued.
Two Yemenia Airways flights could not land. One arriving from Mumbai made an emergency landing at Mukalla, and one from Cairo was diverted to Djibouti.
Four scheduled departures were cancelled and hundreds of passengers were left stranded, according to the news site Al Bawaba, which reported the diversions.
Yemenia, the state carrier, operates the Aden routes affected, among them the services to Cairo and Mumbai.
Col. Majid al-Nuzaily, a spokesperson for the Yemeni armed forces, said the attack caused civilian injuries and material damage.
He described it as part of a recurring series of attacks by the Houthis on civilian and vital infrastructure.
He gave no figure for the injured, and the transport ministry’s statement reported no casualties. Reports carried by Al Bawaba said there were none. Yemen Herald found no independent confirmation that anyone was hurt.
The ministry and al-Nuzaily both said the airport had been struck six times in recent days.
The fourth of those attacks came on Oct. 25, when the government said two missiles were fired at the airport and that such strikes endanger civil aviation.
Those missiles landed inside the perimeter a day after a missile attack on the presidential palace in Aden, AFP reported. The agency described that attack as deadly and gave no toll.
On Saturday the same police official said the Houthis had targeted a position held by the Saudi-led coalition near the airport. The position had been hit the previous week as well, he said.
The Houthis have struck at Aden several times in recent weeks while fighting the Saudi-backed government based there, according to AFP, and have intensified attacks on Saudi Arabia.
The group reports frequent Saudi air strikes in response.
Aden is the seat of Yemen’s internationally recognised government and of its Presidential Leadership Council. The airport is the main air link to the territory the government holds.
Al-Nuzaily said government forces carried out 749 strikes on Houthi targets in the 24 hours to Wednesday.
He said 239 Houthi commanders and fighters were killed or wounded and that 117 vehicles and weapons systems were destroyed or damaged.
Arab News, which reported his remarks, said it did not verify them. The Houthis have published no casualty count for the period and dispute government accounts of the fighting.
Elsewhere on Wednesday, the Houthi broadcaster Almasirah said 14 people were killed and 10 wounded, among them women and children, in strikes on a market and a petrol station in al-Jawf province.
It placed the two sites in the northwest of the province and called the toll preliminary, attributing the strikes to Saudi Arabia.
Saudi officials did not comment, and Yemen Herald found no second origin for the figures.
Fighting across Yemen resumed after a truce agreed in 2022 broke down in July, according to AFP. The Houthis had allowed an Iranian aircraft to land in Sanaa, defying Saudi control of Yemeni airspace.
The group then declared a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia, attacked Saudi ships, territory and oil facilities, and took government-held ground along the Red Sea coast.
Exchanges between the Houthis and the Aden-based government intensified in early September, ending the relative calm that had followed the truce.
The Yemen fighting sits within a wider regional war that began with US and Israeli strikes on Iran in February.
The World Food Programme has said more than 800,000 people in Taiz were cut off from assistance for 20 days.
The United Nations humanitarian plan published in March counted more than 22 million people in Yemen in need of assistance and 18.3 million who were acutely food insecure.
It recorded 5.2 million displaced people and more than 2.2 million children under five who were acutely malnourished, 516,157 of them severely.
The plan sought 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people.
About the Author
