Israel bombed Yemen airport as Airbus 320 with hundreds of passengers was landing
Israeli warplanes bombed Yemen’s main airport as a civilian Airbus 320 with hundreds of passengers on board was coming in to land, a UN official said.
Julien Harneis, the UN’s top humanitarian official in Yemen, told reporters that the most frightening thing about the two air strikes on the international airport in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, on Thursday was the destruction of the airport control tower as a Yemenia Airways plane was taxiing in after touching down.
“Fortunately, that plane was able to land safely and the passengers were able to disembark, but it could have been far, far worse,” said Harneis, who was with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in the lounge of the airport at the time of the attack.
A crew member from the UN Humanitarian Air Service, which was about to fly the UN delegation of some 20 people out of Sanaa, was injured in the attack.
He suffered a serious leg injury from shrapnel and lost a lot of blood, Harneis said, adding that the injured crew member was able to depart for treatment in Jordan on Friday afternoon – without an operating control tower – along with Tedros and other UN staff.
“I was not sure actually I could survive”: WHO chief on Israeli strike on Yemen
World Health Organization director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, did not know whether he would survive an air strike on Yemen’s main airport carried out by Israel on Thursday.
Tedros told the Reuters news agency that he had received no warning of the Israeli strike and the nearby explosion was so loud it left his ears ringing for more than a day later. “I was not sure actually I could survive because it was so close, a few metres from where we were,” he said. “A slight deviation could have resulted in a direct hit.”
Tedros said he and his UN colleagues were stuck at the stricken airport for the next hour or so and could hear what was thought to be drones flying overhead, which fed concerns they could open fire again. Among the debris in the airport terminal, Tedros and his colleagues saw missile fragments.
The WHO chief said his travel itinerary to Yemen had been shared publicly and he expressed surprise that civilian infrastructure was targeted.
“So a civilian airport should be protected, whether I am in it or not,” he said. “One of my colleagues said we narrowly escaped death. I’m just one human being. So I feel for those who are facing the same thing every single day. But at least it allowed me to feel the way they feel,” he added.
https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1872783290584973458
Houthi-affiliated media reports Western air attacks on Yemen
Al Masirah TV, a network close to the Yemeni rebel movement, says “an American-British aggression” targeted the Midi area of the Hajjah governorate in the northwest of the country.
The report said there were two attacks.
The US, UK and Israel have been carrying out heavy attacks on Houthi positions in Yemen for months, as the group continues to launch missile and drone attacks against Israel.
