SANAA, Yemen (AP) – A major explosion hit the airport in the South Yemeni city of Aden on Wednesday, shortly 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.
Yemen’s internationally recognized government said Iranian-backed Houthi rebels fired four ballistic missiles at the airport. Rebel officials did not answer calls from The Associated Press asking for comment. No one on the government plane was injured.
Officials later reported another explosion near a palace in the city where cabinet members were transferred following the airport attack. The Saudi-led coalition later shot down a bomb-laden drone attempting to target the palace, according to Saudi TV channel Al-Arabiya.
The cabinet reshuffle was seen as an important step towards closing a dangerous rift between the government of controversial Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and southern separatists backed by the United Arab Emirates. Hadi’s government and the separatists are nominally allies in Yemen’s long-standing civil war that pits the Saudi-led, US-backed military coalition against the Houthis, who control most of North Yemen, as well as the country’s capital. Sanaa.
AP footage of the airport scene showed members of the government delegation disembarking as the explosion shook the grounds. Many ministers rushed back on the plane or ran down the stairs in search of shelter.
Thick smoke rose from the vicinity of the terminal building. Officials at the scene said they saw bodies lying on the tarmac and elsewhere at the airport.
Yemeni Communications Minister Naguib al-Awg, who was on the plane, told the AP that he had heard two explosions, suggesting they were drone strikes. Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed and the others were rushed from the airport to Mashiq Palace.
Military and security forces closed off the area around the palace.
“It would have been a disaster if the plane had been bombed,” said Al-Awg, noting that the plane was the target of the attack, as it should have landed earlier.
Prime Minister Saeed tweeted that he and his cabinet were safe and unharmed. He called the explosions a “cowardly act of terrorism” 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 later said in a statement that the rebels fired four ballistic missiles at the airport and launched drone strikes on the palace, the cabinet headquarters. They have not provided proof.
Health Minister Qasem Buhaibuh said in a tweet that the airport attacks killed at least 25 people and injured 110 others, suggesting the death toll could rise further as some of the wounds were serious.
Images shared of the scene on social media showed debris and broken glass around the airport building and at least two lifeless bodies, one of them charred, lying on the floor. In another image, a man tries to help another man whose clothes were torn to get off the ground.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said three of its workers were killed in the blast at the airport: two Yemeni citizens and one Rwandan. Three other workers were injured. ICRC workers were in transit with other civilians at the airport when the explosion occurred, he said.
“This is a tragic day for the ICRC and for the people of Yemen,” said Dominik Stillhart, ICRC’s director of operations.
Yemeni Belqees Television said its reporter Adeeb al-Ganabi was also killed in the blast at the airport. Information Minister Moammer al-Iryani said at least 10 other journalists have been injured.
A statement by Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said the “Secretary-General condemns the regrettable attack on Aden airport shortly after the arrival of the newly formed Yemeni cabinet, in which dozens of people were killed and injured.”
Anwar Gargash, the United Arab Emirates’ Secretary of State, said the attack on Aden airport was intended to destroy the power-sharing agreement between Yemen’s internationally recognized government and the southern separatists.
The US Ambassador to Yemen, Christopher Henzel, said the US condemned the attacks in Aden. “We stand with the Yemeni people in the pursuit of peace, and we support the new Yemeni government in seeking a better future for all Yemenis,” he said.
Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab and Western countries also condemned the airport attack.
Yemeni ministers returned to Aden from the Saudi capital, Riyadh, after being sworn in last week as part of a reshuffle following a deal with the separatists. Yemen’s internationally recognized government has primarily operated from the self-imposed exile in Riyadh during the country’s many years of civil war.
Saudi Ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed al-Jaber, described the attack as a “cowardly act of terrorism directed against the Yemeni people, their security and stability.”
Despite “the disappointment and confusion caused by those causing death and destruction,” the peace deal between the government and southern separatists “will continue,” he said.
Hadi, in exile in Saudi Arabia, announced the cabinet reshuffle earlier this month.
The appointment of a new government was part of a power-sharing agreement between the Saudi-backed Hadi and the Emirates-backed separatist Southern Transitional Council, an umbrella group of militias trying to restore an independent South Yemen that existed from 1967 until reunification in 1990.
The explosion underscores the dangers faced by Hadi’s government in the port city, the scene of bloody fighting between the forces of the internationally recognized government and UAE-backed separatists.
In a video message later posted to his Twitter account, Saeed, the Yemeni prime minister, said his government in Aden was “to stay”. The city has been the seat of Hadi’s government since Houthi rebels conquered the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.
Last year, the Houthis fired a missile during a military parade of newly graduated 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 on an Aden hotel used by the government.
Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab world, has been in civil war since 2014, when the Houthis overran the north and Sana’a. The following year, a Saudi-led military coalition stepped in to wage war on the Houthis and bring Hadi’s government to power.
The war killed more than 112,000 people and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Maggie Michael in Cairo contributed to this report.