SANAA (Dispatches) – The first commercial flight from Yemen’s capital in six years had to be indefinitely postponed after Saudi Arabia which has been waging a destructive war on the impoverished nation with Western support refused to issue permits, the national carrier said Sunday.
The capital’s airport was due to receive the commercial aircraft Sunday morning, reviving hopes that the war-torn country could resume some normal operations.
A brutal seven-year war has killed hundreds of thousands and left millions on the brink of famine.
The plane operated by national carrier Yemenia was due to take passengers in need of medical treatment from Sanaa to Jordan’s capital Amman as part of a two-month truce that went into effect in early April.
But hours before the flight, the airline said on its Facebook page that “it has not yet received operating permits,” and expressed “deep regret to the travelers for not being allowed to operate” the long-awaited flight.
It added that it hopes “all problems will be overcome in the near future”, without specifying a date for the route to operate.
One of the passengers told AFP that he had received a call from the airline asking him not to go to the airport. A manager at the company told AFP that “the needed permission from the coalition didn’t arrive.”
The airport in Sanaa has been closed to commercial traffic since August 2016 when Saudi airstrikes disrupted service to the city.
The pause of commercial flights has prevented “thousands of sick Yemeni civilians from seeking urgent medical treatment outside the country,” humanitarian groups CARE and the Norwegian Refugee Council said last August.
They also cited “economic losses estimated to be in the billions.”
Daily flights out of Aden (south) and Seiyun (center) which are controlled by Saudi-backed forces operate domestically and connect Yemen to other countries in the region.
A spokesman for Yemen’s popular Ansarullah resistance movement warned Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) of painful responses if the UN-brokered ceasefire collapses.
“Yemeni armed forces and fighters from Popular Committees are ready to stand up to any aggression,” Muhammad Abdulsalam said.
Mahdi al-Mashat, who heads Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, earlier had said efforts were underway to ensure the success of the ceasefire and called for the reopening of Sanaa airport, Hudaydah port and the lifting of the cruel siege.
Saudi-led military forces and their allied takfiri militants were reported Sunday to have launched barrages of artillery rounds and rockets at positions held by Yemeni armed forces in the oil-rich central province of Ma’rib.