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A large explosion struck the airport in the southern Yemen city of Aden shortly after a plane carrying the newly formed cabinet landed there, security officials said. At least 22 people died and 50 were injured in the blast.
The source of the blast was not immediately clear, and no group claimed responsibility for the attack on the airport. No one on the government plane was injured.
Authorities later reported another explosion near a palace in the city where cabinet members were taken after the airport attack. And the Saudi-led coalition subsequently shot down a bomb-laden drone attempting to attack the palace, according to the Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya television channel.
Uncredited / AP
At least 22 people died and 50 were injured in the blast.
The cabinet shakeup was seen as an important step in closing a dangerous gap between the government of embattled Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and the UAE-backed separatists from the south. The Saudi-backed Yemeni government is at war with Iran’s allied Houthi rebels, who control most of northern Yemen, as well as the country’s capital, Sanaa.
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AP footage from the scene at the airport showed members of the government delegation disembarking as the blast shook the grounds. Many ministers rushed back inside the plane or ran down the stairs seeking shelter.
Thick smoke rose into the air from near the terminal building. Officials at the scene said they saw bodies dumped on the runway and elsewhere at the airport.
Uncredited / AP
A large explosion hit the airport in the city of Aden, in southern Yemen.
Yemen’s Communications Minister Naguib al-Awg, who was on the plane, told The Associated Press that he heard two explosions, suggesting they were drone strikes. Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed and the others were rushed from the airport to the Mashiq Palace.
The military and security forces closed off the area around the palace.
“It would have been a disaster if the plane was bombed,” al-Awg said, insisting that the plane was the target of the attack, as it was supposed to land earlier.
Prime Minister Saeed tweeted that he and his cabinet were safe and sound. He called the explosions a “cowardly terrorist act” that was part of the war against “the Yemeni state and our great people.”
Uncredited / AP
Glass and debris cover the damaged part of the airport in Yemen.
Foreign Minister Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak blamed the Houthis for the attacks without offering proof. Houthi officials did not respond to AP phone calls seeking comment.
Mohammed al-Roubid, deputy director of the Aden health office, told the AP that at least 16 people were killed in the blast and 60 were injured. Subsequently, the Interior Ministry raised the number of victims to at least 22 dead and 50 injured.
Images shared on social media from the scene showed debris and broken glass strewn 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 whose clothes were ripped off the ground.
Wael Qubady / AP
People leave the runway after an explosion at the airport in Aden, Yemen.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said one of its workers died and three others were injured in the attack on the airport. He said two more were still missing. “Our personnel were passing through the airport with other civilians. This is a tragic day for us and the people of #Yemen, ”the ICRC tweeted.
The ICRC did not provide further details, including the nationalities of the victims. The official Lebanese news agency reported that Lebanese resident Yara Khawaja, an ICRC spokesperson in Yemen, was injured in the blast.
Wael Qubady / AP
No one on the government plane was injured.
Authorities said another explosion occurred near the heavily fortified Mashiq Palace, where cabinet members were taken after the airport blast. The source of that explosion and whether it occurred before or after the arrival of Cabinet members were not immediately known. There were no immediate reports of deaths, and officials said cabinet members arrived safely.
The UN’s special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, condemned the explosion as an “unacceptable act of violence.” He said in a tweet that it was “a tragic reminder of the importance of urgently returning #Yemen to the path of peace.”
Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, said the attacks on Aden airport were aimed at destroying the power-sharing agreement between the internationally recognized Yemeni government and southern separatists.
The US ambassador to Yemen, Christopher Henzel, said the United States condemned the attacks in Aden. “We support the Yemeni people in their fight for peace, and we support the new Yemeni government in its work towards a better future for all Yemenis,” he said.
Egypt, Jordan and the Arab League also condemned the attacks.
Yemeni ministers were returning to Aden from the Saudi capital Riyadh after being sworn in last week as part of a shakeup following a deal with rival southern separatists. Yemen’s internationally recognized government has worked primarily from self-imposed exile in Riyadh during the country’s years of civil war.
The Saudi ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed al-Jaber, described the attack as a “cowardly terrorist act against 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 southern separatists “will go ahead,” he said.
Hadi, in exile in Saudi Arabia, announced a cabinet shakeup earlier this month. Appointing a new government was part of a power-sharing agreement between Hadi, backed by Saudi Arabia, and the Separatist Southern Transitional Council, a group of militias seeking to restore an independent southern Yemen, which existed from 1967 until unification in 1990.
The blast underscores the dangers facing Hadi’s government in the port city, which was the scene of bloody fighting between internationally recognized government forces and UAE-backed separatists.
In a video message later posted on his Twitter account, Saeed, the Yemeni prime minister, said his government was in Aden “to stay.” The city has been the seat of Hadi’s government since the Houthi rebels invaded the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.
Last year, the Houthis fired a missile at a military parade of newly graduated fighters from a militia loyal to the United Arab Emirates 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, attributed to the Houthis, at a government-run Aden hotel.
Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, has been embroiled in a civil war since 2014, when Shiite Houthi rebels invaded the north and Sanaa. The following year, a Saudi-led military coalition intervened to wage war on the Houthis and restore power to the Hadi government.
The war has killed more than 112,000, including thousands of civilians. The conflict also resulted in the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
