SANAA, Yemen (AP) – A major explosion hit the airport in the city of Aden, in southern Yemen, on Wednesday, just after a plane carrying the newly formed Cabinet landed there, security officials said. At least 25 people died and 110 were injured in the explosion.
The internationally recognized Yemeni government said Iran-backed Houthi rebels fired four ballistic missiles at the airport. Rebel officials did not respond to calls from the Associated Press seeking comment. No one on the government plane was injured.
Authorities later reported another explosion near a palace in the city where Cabinet members were transferred after the attack on the airport. The Saudi-led coalition later toppled a bomb-loaded drone that was trying to hit the palace, according to Saudi-owned TV channel Al-Arabiya.
The Cabinet reshuffle was seen as an important step towards closing a dangerous divide between the government of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and the United Arab Emirates-backed southern separatists. Hadi’s government and separatists are nominal allies in Yemen’s long-running civil war that pits the Saudi-led and US-backed military coalition against the Houthis, who control most of northern Yemen, as well as the country’s capital, Sanaa.
AP images of the airport scene showed members of the government delegation disembarking as the explosion rocked the ground. Many ministers rushed back inside the plane or went down the stairs in search of shelter.
Dense smoke rose in the air from near the terminal building. Officials at the scene said they saw bodies lying on the runway and elsewhere in the airport.
Yemen’s communication minister, Naguib al-Awg, who was on the plane, told the AP that he heard two explosions, suggesting they were drone attacks. Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed and the others were quickly transported from the airport to Mashiq Palace.
Military and security forces cordoned off the area around the palace.
“It would have been a disaster if the plane was bombed,” said al-Awg, insisting that the plane was the target of the attack, as it should land beforehand.
Prime Minister Saeed tweeted that he and his cabinet were safe and unharmed. He called the explosions a “cowardly terrorist act” that was part of the war against “the Yemeni state and our great people”.
Foreign Minister Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak blamed the Houthis for the attacks. His ministry said in a subsequent statement that the rebels fired four ballistic missiles at the airport and launched drone attacks on the palace, the headquarters of the Cabinet. They did not provide evidence.
Health Minister Qasem Buhaibuh said in a tweet that the airport attacks killed at least 25 people and wounded 110 others, suggesting that the death toll could rise further because some of the injuries are serious.
Images shared on the scene’s social media showed debris and broken glass scattered near the airport building and at least two lifeless bodies, one charred, lying on the floor. In another image, a man tries to help another man whose clothes have been torn off the floor.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that three of its workers died in the airport explosion: two Yemenis and one Rwandan. Three other workers were injured. ICRC officials were at the airport in transit with other civilians when the explosion occurred, the newspaper said.
“This is a tragic day for the ICRC and the people of Yemen,” said Dominik Stillhart, the ICRC’s director of operations.
Yemeni television Belqees said its reporter Adeeb al-Ganabi was also killed in the airport explosion. Information Minister Moammer al-Iryani said at least 10 other journalists were injured.
A statement by Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said that “the Secretary-General condemns the deplorable attack on Aden airport shortly after the arrival of the newly formed Yemeni cabinet, which killed and injured dozens of people ”.
Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s foreign minister, said the attack on Aden airport was aimed at destroying the power-sharing agreement between Yemen’s internationally recognized government and southern separatists.
The United States ambassador to Yemen, Christopher Henzel, said the United States had condemned the attacks on Aden. “We support the Yemeni people in their struggle for peace and we support the new Yemeni government that works for a better future for all Yemenis,” he said.
Egypt, Jordan and other Arab and Western nations also condemned the attack on the airport.
Yemeni ministers were returning to Aden from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, after being sworn in last week as part of a remodeling after a deal with separatists. The internationally recognized government of Yemen has worked mainly since the self-imposed exile in Riyadh during the country’s civil war years.
The Saudi ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed al-Jaber, described the attack as “a cowardly terrorist act aimed at 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 continue,” he said.
Hadi, in exile in Saudi Arabia, announced the remodeling of the Cabinet earlier this month.
Naming a new government was part of a power-sharing agreement between Hadi, supported by the Saudis, and the Southern Transition Council, supported by the Emirates, an umbrella group of militias seeking to restore an independent southern Yemen, which existed from 1967 to unification in 1990.
The explosion underscores the dangers the Hadi government faces in the port city, the scene of bloody fighting between internationally recognized government forces and United Arab Emirates-backed separatists.
In a video message posted to his Twitter account later, Saeed, Yemen’s 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 trained fighters from a militia loyal to the UAE 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 an Aden hotel used by the government.
Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, has been plunged into civil war since 2014, when the Houthis invaded the north and Sanaa. The following year, a Saudi-led military coalition stepped in to declare war on the Houthis and restore Hadi’s rule to power.
The war killed more than 112,000 people and caused the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Maggie Michael of Cairo contributed to this report.