Sanaa Airport Out of Use After Saudi Airstrikes

Date: 22 December 2021 - 21:43

News ID: ۹۸۰۸۵

SANAA (Dispatches) --
Sanaa’s airport is damaged after being bombed by Saudi Arabia and needs urgent repair before it can receive flights again, a Yemeni aviation worker has warned.
On Monday, the kingdom which has been waging a war on the impoverished nation hit what it called legitimate military targets in Sanaa airport with airstrikes.
Sanaa’s civil aviation authority had already closed the airport on Sunday in protest at the kingdom, which maintains a siege on Yemen, refusing to allow “essential” equipment into the facility.
“We said that we need equipment, but Saudi Arabia started to bomb it instead of sending the required equipment,” a source in the civil aviation authority told Middle East Eye, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“The airstrikes targeted the tarmac and several buildings in the airport including the customs department, and a fire broke out.”
The source said that the airstrikes have made airport workers feel they are not safe in the facility any longer, and it cannot operate flights while it remains a target.
Saudi Arabia “is imposing a siege on Yemen and they don’t care about Yemenis and their interests.”
Sanaa’s airport has been closed to commercial traffic since 2016 but remains a lifeline for Yemenis.
More than half of Yemenis are reliant on some form of humanitarian aid, some of which enters the country through Sanaa airport.
On Tuesday, aid workers called for the airport to reopen so supplies can resume.
“It is vitally important that the airport is re-opened as quickly as possible, and that the two sides commit to keeping the airport out of the conflict in the future,”

Ahmed Mahat, Medecins Sans Frontieres’ head of mission in Yemen, told MEE.
A limited number of flights also take out Yemenis who need urgent treatment abroad.
Ali, the brother of one of those patients, said it was frustrating seeing the UN and NGOs use the airport before the closure as he struggled to secure passage for his brother.
“The United Nations can use the airport freely, but we can’t take our patients abroad. That isn’t justice,” he told MEE.
“The UN should put pressure on the Saudis to allow flights to land and take off Sanaa airport with patients.”
Saudi Arabia justified Monday’s airstrikes by claiming that the airport had been used to stage attacks on Saudi soil. Riyadh claimed that it destroyed an attack drone on Sunday sent from Sanaa airport on Sunday aimed at the airport in Jizan, in the kingdom’s south.
Yet in Yemen, speculations are swirling about the standoff between Saudi Arabia and Iran over Hasan Irloo, the Iranian ambassador in Sanaa who recently passed away of Covid.
Iran had asked Saudi Arabia to allow Irloo to be flown out of Sanaa to receive urgent medical care.
Though he was eventually allowed to leave for Iraq, on Tuesday Iran said Irloo had passed away and blame Riyadh for delaying his treatment.
“We had to try for a few days to get permission to send a plane from Iran or another country to take him quickly to a well-equipped hospital in Iran, but unfortunately the Saudi side decided too late and some Saudi bodies procrastinated,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian said.
Like other Yemenis, Ali suspects the anger behind Irloo’s passing is adding fuel to the flames regarding the airport closure.
“I hear rumors that the Houthis are angry that Irloo couldn’t go abroad for treatment, and I agree with them as the UN can use the airport freely and patients can’t,” he said.