Sanaa (Yemen): A large explosion struck the airport Wednesday in the southern Yemeni city of Aden. The large explosion took place shortly before a plane carrying the newly formed Cabinet landed there, security officials said. Initial reports said at least four people were killed and dozens were wounded. Some of those injured are critical, so the toll may rise.
The source of the explosion was not immediately clear and no group claimed responsibility for the explosion.
No one on the government plane was hurt. However, officials at the scene said they saw bodies lying on the tarmac and elsewhere at the airport. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the media.
Yemeni Communication Minister Naguib al-Awg was also on the government plane. He told this agency that he heard two explosions, suggesting they were drone attacks.
Yemeni Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed and the others were quickly whisked away from the airport to the Mashiq Palace in the city.
“It would have been a disaster if the plane was bombed,” Saeed said, insisting the plane was the target of the attack as it was supposed to land earlier.
Images shared on social media from the scene showed rubble and broken glass strewn about near the airport building and at least two lifeless bodies, one of them charred, lying on the ground. In another image, a man was trying to help another man whose clothes were torn to get up from the ground.
The ministers were returning to Aden after being sworn in last week as part of a reshuffle following a deal with rival southern separatists. Yemen’s internationally recognised government has worked mostly from self-imposed exile in the Saudi capital of Riyadh during the country’s years-long civil war.
Yemen’s embattled President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, in exile in Saudi Arabia, announced a Cabinet reshuffle earlier this month. The reshuffle was seen as a major step toward closing a dangerous rift between Hadi’s government and southern separatists backed by the United Arab Emirates.
Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, has been engulfed in civil war since 2014, when the Shiite Houthi rebels overran the north and Sanaa. The following year, a Saudi-led military coalition intervened to wage war on the Houthis and restore Hadi’s government to power.