(Aden) At least 12 civilians were killed on Saturday in an explosion near the airport in Aden, Yemen’s second warring city and seat of government, an official said.
The origin of the explosion was not immediately known. This city in the south of the country has been the target of several attacks attributed by the authorities to the Houthi rebels, or claimed by the jihadist group Islamic State (IS).
“Twelve civilians were killed in an explosion near Aden airport,” said a security official, reporting an unknown number of injured, some in critical condition.
Firefighters were dispatched to the scene to extinguish the fire caused by the explosion and men removed a body from a destroyed car, an AFP correspondent noted.
On October 10, Aden was struck by a car bomb that claimed the lives of six people. The attack targeted a convoy of officials including the governor of Aden and a minister, who escaped unharmed.
Saturday’s explosion is the deadliest since December 2020, when an attack at Aden airport killed 26 people after a plane carrying government officials landed.
Yemen has since 2014 been plunged into a war between pro-government forces and the Houthis, rebels who control much of the north of the country including the capital Sana’a.
After the conquest of the capital by the Houthis, the government had provisionally established its seat in Aden.
The Houthis have the political backing of Iran, while power has been supported militarily since 2015 by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s neighbor and Tehran’s great rival.
Children killed in Taëz
Earlier on Saturday, three children, brothers, were killed and three others injured in shellfire in Taëz (southwest), the country’s third largest city, according to a security official.
The official Saba news agency accused the Houthis of “bombing the al-Kamp neighborhood, killing three children and injuring three others, one of whom had to have his legs amputated.”
According to international NGOs, tens of thousands of people have perished in the conflict and millions have been displaced. Almost 80% of the Yemeni population rely on humanitarian aid to survive.
According to the authorities, 139 IDP camps are home to more than two million people who have fled clashes across the country.
In recent weeks, fighting has intensified around the town of Marib, the last loyalist stronghold in northern Yemen that insurgents are seeking to capture.
The coalition reports almost daily reports of rebels killed in the strikes. These figures cannot be independently verified, however, and the Houthis rarely communicate their losses.
One of the Houthi leaders, Mohammed Nasser al-Atifi said this week that the city was “almost surrounded” by the rebels and that its capture was “only a matter of time”.
Since the beginning of the year, the fighting around Marib has displaced more than 55,000 people, including 10,000 in September alone, according to the spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration in mid-October. These figures only relate to the areas to which the teams have access.