Arab coalition warplanes targeting Iran-backed rebels bombed the runway at the Yemeni capital’s international airport and killed 15 pro-rebel troops elsewhere in Sanaa, military and aviation sources said Sunday.
On the fourth night of raids against Shia rebels and allied troops loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, Saudi-led strikes paralysed the airport in the rebel-controlled capital.
“This was the first time they hit the runway” since the campaign began, an aviation source said, a day after UN staff were evacuated from Sanaa. “The airport is completely out of service.”
Witnesses heard three explosions and saw a large fire when the air facility was hit around midnight (8am AEDT).
Meanwhile, airstrikes hit the headquarters of the rebel republican guard at al-Subaha base in Sanaa, killing 15 soldiers, a military official said.
A medic at a military hospital in the capital said it had received 12 bodies and 18 wounded soldiers after the raid.
Airstrikes also targeted an airbase in rebel-held Hudaida, in western Yemen, witnesses said, as part of efforts to destroy air defence capabilities.
Other raids targeted a base of the First Artillery Brigade in Saada, the northern stronghold of the Houthi Shia rebels.
Earlier, the UN evacuated staff from Yemen as Russia warned that Saudi-led airstrikes on the Iranian-backed rebels were affecting nuclear talks between world powers and Tehran.
Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi urged his Arab allies to keep up the bombing raids. “I call for this operation to continue until this gang surrenders and withdraws from all locations it has occupied in every province,” he told an Arab League summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
“I say to Iran’s puppet and whoever is with him, you are the one who destroyed Yemen with your political immaturity.”
He later flew to Saudi Arabia with King Salman and does not plan to return to Yemen until “the situation settles”, Foreign Minister Riyad Yassin said.
“The Houthis are trying to take it (Aden) by any means to impose a new reality on the ground before the summit ends,” Yassin added.
Russia’s chief negotiator in the Iranian nuclear talks said Moscow hoped the Yemen fighting would not jeopardise negotiations between Tehran and world powers in Switzerland.
“Unfortunately, we are seeing that the tragedy that is happening in this country (Yemen) is having an impact on the atmosphere of the negotiations,” deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti news agency.
“We hope that the situation in Yemen will not bring about a change in the position of certain participants.”
More than 200 staff from the UN, foreign embassies and other organisations were evacuated by air earlier in the day, aid workers said. Pakistan said it was preparing to evacuate its citizens and diplomatic staff.
The Arab summit was expected to back the offensive against the rebels and approve a joint military force.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told fellow leaders the region faced “unprecedented” threats.
And Saudi King Salman vowed the airstrikes would continue until they brought “security” to the Yemeni people. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Arab leaders to “lay down clear guidelines to peacefully resolve the crisis in Yemen”.