Aden Airport Attack: Houthi Missiles Hit Yemen’s Airport

Yemen’s Ansurullah movement, widely known as the Houthis, fired missiles at Aden International Airport twice on October 28, the first striking while a Saudi military aircraft was on the ground. A local police source told Agence France-Presse that a missile fell within the airport grounds shortly before the movement’s military spokesman, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, called on everyone present to evacuate. The aircraft was not hit and took off shortly afterward, the source said, while a second police official stated that a second attack targeted an area under Saudi forces’ control inside the perimeter. The attacks highlight how far the war now reaches into the seat of Yemen’s internationally recognised government, where a Saudi military cargo flight has been publicly declared a target.

Saree’s statement, posted online, claimed that the aircraft was a Saudi military cargo plane carrying weapons to be used against the Yemeni people. Neither the Saudi-led coalition nor the Yemeni government had responded to the claim, and a local security official told China’s Xinhua news agency that casualties and damage were not yet known. The strikes are far from the first on the facility this month, with the Yemeni Ministry of Transport having reported on October 24 that two ballistic missiles targeted the airport in the fourth such attack of October. On October 7 a missile reportedly landed near the runway shortly before a scheduled Cairo flight, which was diverted to Jeddah, days before the movement’s threat against every Saudi airport.

On the same day, the Houthi broadcaster Almasirah reported that air strikes it blamed on Saudi Arabia had hit a market and a petrol station in al-Hazm, the capital of Jawf province, killing 14 people and wounding 15 in a preliminary toll on which Saudi authorities did not immediately comment. The movement claimed on October 27 to have targeted the Saudi Ministry of Defence in Riyadh, Abha airport and the Ras Tanura refinery, while Saudi authorities reported intercepting missiles over Riyadh and the Eastern Province. That followed the coalition’s reported interception of a cruise missile aimed at Khamis Mushait on October 25, in a war that resumed in July when the 2022 truce collapsed after the movement allowed an Iranian aircraft to land in Sanaa.

Aden has served as the government’s seat since the movement seized Sanaa in late 2014 and drove the government south. Government forces are now fighting the movement around the besieged city of Taiz, which has taken in nearly half of the almost 260,000 people the United Nations reported on October 22 as displaced across Yemen since August. According to AFP, the movement also targeted a Saudi coalition position near the airport on October 24 and in the previous week. Two missiles had landed within the perimeter earlier in October, a day after a deadly missile attack hit the presidential palace in Aden. The deadliest attack on the airport came on December 30, 2020, when explosions hit the apron as members of a newly formed cabinet arrived from Riyadh, killing more than 20 people in an attack the government blamed on the movement.