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Thursday, December 31, 2020, 23:21
Rebel sites hit as official Yemen airport toll climbs
By Agencies
Thursday, December 31, 2020, 23:21 By Agencies

Glass and debris cover the damaged portion of the airport in Yemen’s southern city of Aden after an attack on Dec 30, 2020. (PHOTO / AP)

A Saudi-led military coalition pounded facilities of Houthi rebels accused of a deadly assault on a Yemen airport, as the official toll from the attack climbed to 25 dead and 110 wounded.

Health Minister Qasem Buhabeh said the number of dead is likely to increase because some of the wounded are in critical condition. The airport in the southern port city of Aden was attacked on Wednesday as a new cabinet flew in from Saudi Arabia.

ALSO READ: 'Countdown to catastrophe' in Yemen as UN warns of famine again

A deputy minister of public works was killed, and two other vice-ministers were among the wounded, according to the government-run Saba news agency. Three members of the International Committee for the Red Cross were also among the dead.

This AFP graphic shows a map locating Aden in Yemen and the international airport hit by deadly explosions on Dec 30, 2020.

Yemen President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi blamed the assault on Yemeni Houthi rebels, who have been fighting the government since 2014. On Thursday, Saudi-led coalition warplanes launched multiple airstrikes on posts of the Iran-backed rebels in the capital, Sanaa, and surrounding areas, according to the Houthis’ Al-Masirah TV.

When we talk about the Houthis, we are talking about Iran and its sabotage agenda in the region.

Maeen Abdulmalik, Yemen Prime Minister 

Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik said an initial investigation showed the airport was attacked by missiles, and that intelligence information showed Iran helped the Houthis prepare for the assault.

“When we talk about the Houthis, we are talking about Iran and its sabotage agenda in the region,” Abdulmalik said, speaking at the cabinet’s first meeting in Aden.

Abdulmalik said all members of the cabinet were “fine”. But the attack underlined the difficulties facing a government intended by Saudi Arabia to unite two of its allies in the war against the Iran-aligned Houthi movement.

READ MORE: New Yemeni power-sharing govt sworn in in Saudi Arabia

Hours after the attack, a second explosion was heard around Aden’s Maasheq presidential palace where the cabinet members including Maeen, as well as the Saudi ambassador to Yemen, Mohammad Said al-Jaber, had been taken to safety, residents and local media said.

Smoke billows at the airport in Aden on Dec 30, 2020 after explosions rocked the Yemeni airport shortly after the arrival of a plane carrying members of a new unity government. (SALEH Al-OBEIDI / AFP)

There was no immediate reaction from the Houthis, who denied responsibility for the airport attack.

The formation of the cabinet had been hailed as a cementing of the fragile detente between the government of the exiled Hadi and the separatist Southern Transitional Council, allies in the fight to dislodge rebels who control Sana’a and other chunks of the country. Their alliance frayed last year after separatists seized control of Aden and other southern cities, but was mended under a power-sharing deal brokered by Saudi Arabia.

ALSO READ: Blasts at Yemen airport kills at least 20 as new cabinet lands

Hadi’s government, which had fled to Aden after the fall of Sanaa, had been living in exile in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, since the clashes with council forces last year. The country is in the throes of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, fed by the Saudi-led coalition’s five-year attempt to crush the rebellion and prevent the establishment of a Shiite-ruled state sympathetic to Iran on the Arabian peninsula.

Yemen is strategically significant because it lies on a waterway linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden that is a conduit for much of the world’s oil.

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