Houthis hit Aden airport minutes before a Cairo flight is due in
Yemen's transport ministry said a missile landed near the Aden runway on Wednesday minutes before a flight from Cairo was due. The landing was cancelled and the aircraft diverted to Jeddah. Two planes were moved off the runway. The Houthis said they targeted Saudi military supplies at Badr camp. Saudi forces said they intercepted a separate missile north of Riyadh.
Aden2 min read
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A ballistic missile landed near the runway at Aden International Airport on Wednesday minutes before a Yemeni flight from Cairo was due to land. The transport ministry of the Saudi-backed government said it cancelled the landing and sent the aircraft to Jeddah. Two planes already on the runway were moved clear because of the risk of further strikes. The terminal was evacuated. The ministry said the Houthis had fired at least two ballistic missiles and several drones at the runway and the passenger terminal.
The Houthis did not claim the passenger terminal in those words. Their statement said they had targeted Saudi military supplies arriving at Badr camp, near the airport. There was no immediate Houthi comment on the ministry's account of the Cairo flight in the first Reuters copy. The two statements can be read against each other: one names a passenger arrival and a diverted aircraft, the other names a camp and military supplies. Aden is the main international gate for the parts of Yemen outside Houthi control, which is why a strike on that runway is not a local traffic incident.
Saudi Arabia, separately, said its forces intercepted and destroyed a Houthi ballistic missile north of Riyadh. That interception is not the Aden strike. It is a second event on the same morning, and it sits beside Monday's attacks on King Abdullah airport in Jazan and on Najran airport, where Saudi civil aviation reported three minor injuries. The week's map now includes airports on both sides of the border and a diversion to Jeddah.
The fighting around this strike is the Yemen front of the wider war that has pulled in the United States, Israel and Iran. Reuters described the Aden attack as part of intensified clashes between the Iran-aligned Houthis and Saudi-backed government forces. Government units have been trying to reverse Houthi gains along the coast. A military source cited in that copy said control of nearby highlands would make a push up the rest of the coast easier, and also said it was unclear whether the government advance would hold.
The operational detail that can be checked without taking either statement whole is the Cairo flight. A commercial arrival has a slot, a tail number and a diversion airport. Jeddah is the diversion the ministry named. If the aircraft landed there, the passenger claim is confirmed even if the argument about Badr camp stays open. If it did not, the ministry's timeline needs a correction. The movement of two aircraft off the Aden runway is a ground fact of the same kind: either they were towed, or they were not.
Aden's airport has been hit before. Photographs from July 2017 still circulate of a damaged terminal from an earlier round. Wednesday's strike is new because of the timing the ministry gives: minutes before a scheduled landing, followed by a diversion, not a closed airport announced after the fact. The Houthis' camp claim, if it is their whole account, does not mention the passengers who were sent to Jeddah. The government account does not settle what was at Badr camp. The flight path is the piece a reader can ask a registry to confirm.
