A police officer walks past debris outside the building of Sanaa Airport, one day after Israeli airstrikes hit the airport, in Sanaa, Yemen, December 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli airstrikes hit Yemen’s main airport as a civilian Airbus 320 with hundreds of passengers on board was landing and a U.N. delegation was waiting to leave, the U.N.’s top humanitarian official in Yemen said on Friday (December 27, 2024).

Julien Harneis told U.N. reporters that the most frightening thing about the two airstrikes on Thursday (December 26, 2024) wasn’t their effect on him and about 15 others in the VIP lounge at the international airport in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, including the head of the U.N. World Health Organization.

Destruction of the airport control tower

Rather, it was the destruction of the airport control tower as a Yemenia Airways plane was taxiing in after touching down.

“Fortunately, that plane was able to land safely and the passengers were able to disembark, but it could have been far, far worse,” said Harneis, who was with WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in the lounge.

He said one airstrike landed approximately 300 meters (330 yards) south of the VIP lounge and another about 300 meters to the north around 4:45 p.m., while about five members of the U.N. team were outside the building.

“Not only obviously did we have zero indication of any potential airstrikes, but we cannot remember the last time there were airstrikes in Sanaa during daylight hours,” Harneis said in a video news conference from Sanaa.

The U.N. said at least three people were killed and dozens injured in the strike. Among the injured was a crew member from the U.N. Humanitarian Air Service, which was about to fly the U.N. delegation of some 20 people out of Sanaa.

He suffered a serious leg injury from shrapnel and lost a lot of blood, Harneis said.

Immediately after the airstrikes, Harneis said, U.N. security officials moved the delegation out of the VIP building and into five armored cars where they waited for approximately 40 minutes to ascertain what happened and help the injured crew member.

He was taken to a hospital in Sanaa and underwent four hours of surgery while the rest of the delegation spent the night in a U.N. compound, Harneis said. The U.N. plane with Tedros and the U.N. team, including the injured crew member, was able to depart for Jordan on Friday afternoon – without an operating control tower.

The United Nations said the injured crew member was taken to a hospital in Jordan, and Tedros was heading back to Geneva, where WHO is based,

U.N. delegation at the Sanaa airport

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who control Sanaa and much of the country’s north, have gone after Israel since it started attacking Gaza following the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks by Gaza’s Hamas militants on southern Israel. The Houthis have attacked ships in the Red Sea, disrupting one of the world’s main maritime routes, and recently stepped up missile and drone attacks on Israel. Early Saturday, the Israeli Air Force reported intercepting yet another missile from Yemen, as sirens woke Israelis around Jerusalem and the Dead Sea.

Israel has escalated its response.

The Israeli army said it wasn’t aware that the WHO chief or U.N. delegation were at the Sanaa airport on Thursday. Israel said it bombed the airport because it is used by the Houthis and Iran.

Harneis responded, stressing that the airport is civilian, not military, and is used for transporting U.N. and other humanitarian workers, and for one civilian flight — Yemenia to and from Amman, Jordan. The flight operates as a result of an international agreement, and thousands of Yemenis have used the flight to get advanced medical treatment abroad, he said.

Yemen is the Arab world’s poorest nation and has been engulfed in a 10-year civil war between the Houthi rebels, who control Sanaa and much of the country’s north, and the internationally recognized government forces in the south.

Tedros was in the country to discuss its worsening humanitarian crisis and to seek the release of about 50 people detained by the Houthis since June from the U.N., nongovernmental organizations and civil society.

Harneis said 18 million Yemenis — about half the country’s population — need humanitarian assistance this year, and the U.N. expects the number to increase to 19 million next year because of the worsening economy.

In addition to airstrikes on the Sanaa airport, Israel has been attacking the country’s key port of Hodeida, in western Yemen.

Harneis said Yemen relies on imports through Hodeida for 80% of its food and more than 90% of its medical supplies to the north.

A recent Israeli airstrike destroyed two tugboats and is estimated to have reduced the harbor’s capacity by 50%, the U.N. official said, while damage from Thursday’s airstrikes hasn’t been assessed yet.

As for the detainees, Harneis said he joined the WHO chief at meetings with the Houthi prime minister, foreign minister and a member of the group’s Supreme Political Council. He said they received commitments on the detainees’ possible release and a pathway to it, and on conditions under which they are being held.

The Israeli Army said on July 13 it has struck several Houthi targets in western Yemen following a fatal drone attack by the rebel group in Tel Aviv the previous day. The Israeli strikes appeared to be the first on Yemeni soil since the Israel-Hamas war began in October.

A number of “military targets” were hit in the western port city of Hodeidah, a Houthi stronghold, the Israeli Army said, adding that its attack was “in response to the hundreds of attacks carried out against the state of Israel in recent months.”

Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam wrote on social media platform X that Yemen was subjected to a “blatant Israeli aggression” that targeted fuel storage facilities and the province’s power station. He said the attacks aim “to increase the suffering of the people and to pressure Yemen to stop supporting Gaza.”

Mr. Abdulsalam said the attacks will only make the people of Yemen and its armed forces more determined to support Gaza. Mohamed Ali al-Houthi of the Supreme Political Council in Yemen wrote on X that “there will be impactful strikes.”

A media outlet controlled by Houthi rebels in Yemen, Al-Masirah TV, said the strikes on storage facilities for oil and diesel at the port and on the local electricity company caused deaths and injuries, and several people suffered severe burns. It said there was a large fire at the port and power cuts were widespread.

Health officials in Yemen said the strikes killed a number of people and injured others, but did not elaborate.

The drone attack by Houthi rebels killed one person in the center of Tel Aviv and wounded at least 10 others near the United States Embassy early on July 19.

Virtually all projectiles fired from the southern Arabian country toward Israel have so far been intercepted. Israel said air defences detected the drone on July 19 but an “error” occurred and “there was no interception.“

Since January, the U.S. and British forces have been striking targets in Yemen, in response to the Houthis’ attacks on commercial shipping that the rebels have described as retaliation for Israel’s actions in the war in Gaza. However, many of the ships targeted are not linked to Israel.

The joint force airstrikes have so far done little to deter the Iran-backed force.

Analysts and Western intelligence services have long accused Iran of arming the Houthis, a claim Tehran denies. In recent years, U.S. naval forces have intercepted a number of ships packed with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and missile parts en route from Iran to Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.

Also on July 20, at least 13 people were killed in three Israeli airstrikes that hit refugee camps in central Gaza overnight, according to Palestinian health officials, as cease-fire talks in Cairo appeared to make progress.

Among the dead in Nuseirat Refugee Camp and Bureij Refugee Camp were three children and one woman, according to Palestinian ambulance teams that transported the bodies to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital. AP journalists counted the 13 corpses at the hospital.

Earlier, a medical team delivered a live baby from a Palestinian woman killed in an airstrike that hit her home in Nuseirat late Thursday evening.

Ola al-Kurd, 25, was killed along with six others in the blast, but was quickly rushed by emergency workers to Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza in the hope of saving the unborn child. Hours later, doctors told The Associated Press that a baby boy had been delivered.

The still-unnamed newborn is stable but has suffered from a shortage of oxygen and has been placed in an incubator, said Dr. Khalil Dajran on July 19.

Ola’s “husband and a relative survived yesterday’s strike, while everyone else died,” Majid al-Kurd, the deceased woman’s cousin, told the AP on July 20.

“The baby is in good health based on what doctors said,” he added.

The war in Gaza, which was sparked by Hamas’ October 7 attack on southern Israel, has killed more than 38,900 people, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The war has created a humanitarian catastrophe in the coastal Palestinian territory, displaced most of its 2.3 million population and triggered widespread hunger.

Hamas’ October attack killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and militants took about 250 hostage. About 120 remain in captivity, with about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.

The Israel-Hamas war has left thousands of women and children dead, according to health officials in the Gaza Strip. In April, a premature Palestinian baby was rescued from her dead mother’s womb but died days later.

In the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said a 20-year-old man was shot dead by Israeli forces late on July 19. Commenting on the shooting, the Israeli Army said its forces opened fire on a group of Palestinians hurling rocks at Israeli troops in the town of Beit Ummar.

An eyewitness said Ibrahim Zaqeq was not directly involved in the clashes and was standing nearby.

Zaqeq “just looked at them, they shot him in the head. I picked him up from here and took him to the clinic,” said Thare Abu Hashem.

On July 20, Hamas identified Zaqeq as one of its members. The militant group’s green flag was wrapped around his corpse during the funeral.

Violence has surged in the territory since the Gaza war began. At least 577 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed by Israeli fire since then according to the Ramallah-based Health Ministry which tracks Palestinian deaths.

In Cairo, international mediators, including the United States, are continuing to push Israel and Hamas toward a phased deal that would halt the fighting and free about 120 hostages in Gaza.

On July 19, the U.S. Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, said a cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel that will release Israeli hostages captive by the group in Gaza is “inside the 10-yard line,” but added “we know that anything in the last 10 yards are the hardest.”

Fruitless stop-and-start negotiations between the warring sides have been underway since November’s one-week cease-fire, with both Hamas and Israel repeatedly accusing each other of scuppering the effort to reach a deal.