ADEN: Yemen’s new power-sharing government vowed on Thursday to bring stability to the war-torn country, a day after deadly blasts rocked Aden airport in an attack targeting cabinet members.
At least 26 people, including three members of the International Committee of the Red Cross and a journalist, were killed and scores wounded in the explosions as ministers disembarked from an aircraft in the southern city.
All cabinet members were reported to be unharmed in what some ministers charged was an attack by the Ansar Allah fighters who control the capital Sanaa and are based in northern Yemen.
AFP video footage shows what appears to be a missile strike followed by a ball of intense flames, in part of the airport which moments before had been packed with crowds.
But it is still not fully clear what caused the explosions.
Foreign Minister Ahmed bin Mubarak said on Thursday that the new unity government was up to tackling the challenges facing a country that has long been the Arab Peninsula’s most impoverished nation.
“The government is determined to fulfil its duty and work to restore stability in Yemen,” he said.
“This terrorist attack will not deter it from that.”
The cabinet convened for the first time in Aden on Thursday, during which members held a moment of silence for those who were killed in the attack.
Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have been killed and millions displaced in Yemen’s grinding five-year war, which has triggered what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.
The cabinet ministers had arrived in Aden days after being sworn in by Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in Saudi Arabia, which leads a military coalition against the Ansar Allah fighters.
Hadi fled to Riyadh after Sanaa fell to Ansar Allah in 2014.
The new government includes ministers loyal to Hadi and supporters of the secessionist Southern Transitional Council, as well as other parties.
While all oppose Ansar Allah fighters, they are deeply divided, and secessionists and forces loyal to the central government have sporadically clashed in and around Aden.
Saudi Arabia has been encouraging the unity government to quell the “war within a civil war” and to bolster the coalition against the Ansar Allah fighters.
Some ministers, including Mubarak, blamed the Ansar Allah fighters for the attack — but other government officials remained more circumspect.
“Information and preliminary investigations show that the Ansar Allah fighters were behind this ugly terrorist attack,” Mubarak said, adding that missiles were launched from Ansar Allah-held areas.
Maged al Madhaji of the Sanaa Centre for Strategic Studies said on Wednesday’s attack was the most significant in the Yemen war.
“The explosions could have destroyed everything. They could have wiped out the entire legitimate government completely,” he said. — AFP
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