By Mohammed Ghobari and Tala Ramadan
July 13 (Reuters) – The Houthi movement that controls northern Yemen accused Saudi Arabia on Monday of launching airstrikes against the international airport in Sanaa, and vowed to retaliate, testing a truce in the long-running conflict between the kingdom and the Iran-aligned group.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree called the attacks “blatant aggression” and said they had ended a period of de-escalation. He said regional power Saudi Arabia would bear the consequences and that the attack would not go unanswered.
The general aviation authority of Yemen’s internationally recognised government ordered the closure of all airports nationwide to air traffic until further notice.
The Saudi government’s communication office did not immediately respond to the accusations.
Earlier on Monday, the defence ministry of Yemen’s internationally recognised government said its armed forces had targeted the runway at Sanaa International Airport to prevent an Iranian plane from landing. A spokesman for Yemen’s armed forces later said the aircraft had landed safely at Hodeidah airport, a Houthi-controlled facility.
The government, which operates from the southern port of Aden, has the backing of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
Yemen has faced civil war and proxy warfare from outside powers for more than a decade, since the Houthis seized the capital and forced the internationally recognised government to relocate to the south.
After years of fighting between a Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis that triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, a 2022 truce has largely held, despite regional escalation tied to the Israel-Gaza war that saw the Houthis fire on Red Sea shipping, as well as the Iran conflict.
Yemen’s more than decade-long civil war flared up last year after a United Arab Emirates-backed separatist movement swept through territory in the south, splintering the Saudi-led coalition that was created to fight the Houthi group.
Moammar bin Mutahar Al-Eryan, the information minister in the internationally recognised government, said the Houthis were detaining an aircraft belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross at Sanaa airport and holding its pilot and co-pilot.
Earlier on Monday, the government’s defence minister had said it had exhausted diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran and the Houthis to stop what he described as Iranian aircraft violating Yemeni airspace. He said government forces would respond to any hostile aircraft violating Yemen’s airspace “by all available means”, and held Iran responsible.
(Reporting by Tala Ramadan, Eman Abouhassira and Menna Alaa El Din, additional reporting by Reyam Mokhasef; Writing by Michael Georgy;Editing by Gareth Jones, Peter Graff and Sharon Singleton)
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