Foreign experts behind Aden airport attack: Yemen govt-Andhravilas

Foreign experts behind Aden airport attack: Yemen govt

Aden, Jan 15 - Yemen's Interior Ministry has said that "foreign experts" supported the Houthi rebels in firing ballistic missiles at Aden's airport last month that killed 27 people.

Addressing the media here on Thursday, Interior Minister Ibrahim Haydan said "the preliminary results showed evidence that Iranian and Lebanese experts were behind the missiles which were used in the terrorist attack", reports Xinhua news agency.

Haydan headed the investigation committee formed by Yemen's President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi following the attack that targeted the airport on December 30, 2020.

He clarified that his committee had collected information from different sources and discovered that the ballistic missiles were launched from a site in the Houthi-controlled area 135 km away from the airport.

The deadly missile attack struck Aden's International Airport, causing three huge explosions just minutes after a plane carrying members of the new power-sharing government arrived from Saudi Arabia.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Saudi-backed Yemeni government accused the Houthi rebels of being behind it.

Senior officials of the Houthi group has denied the accusation and blamed it on Yemeni military factions linked to the Saudi Arabia-led coalition in the government-controlled southern provinces.

The country's health authorities said nearly 27 people were killed and 110 others were wounded, including international aid workers and media employees, in the explosions.

The southern port city of Aden is considered Yemen's temporary capital where the Saudi-backed Yemeni government has been based since 2015.

Yemen has been locked into a civil war since late 2014, when the Houthi rebels overran much of the country and seized all northern provinces, including the capital Sanaa.

--IANS

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(IANS)

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