A Saudi military cargo plane is seen at the international airport of Yemen’s southern port city of Aden, on July 22, 2015. (Reuters/Stringer)
Riyadh and Aden, Asharq Al-Awsat—Plans are now in place to fully reopen Aden’s international airport in southern Yemen within days, an airport official told Asharq Al-Awsat.
Abdul Raqib Al-Amri, the airport’s deputy general manager, said work was now ongoing to restart commercial flights to and from the airport. Two terminals at the airport were now being prepared to receive passengers and said 80 percent of the work needed had already been completed.
Amri added that forces from the United Arab Emirates joined those from Saudi Arabia on Wednesday at the airport in order to fully secure the area around it.
Commercial flights could resume within two days and coordination between airport authorities and international carriers was ongoing.
This comes as Aden was liberated by forces loyal to Yemen’s President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. The city has been besieged and large parts of it occupied by Houthi rebels since March.
The Houthis, backed by Iran and Yemen’s ousted former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, launched a coup in February, deposing President Hadi and the government after having occupied the capital Sana’a since September 2014.
Hadi and several members of the cabinet including Prime Minister Khaled Bahah were placed under house arrest by the Houthis, but both men eventually fled to Saudi Arabia where they requested the Kingdom and its Arab allies intervene with military force in Yemen to restore the legitimate political authority in the country.
Speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat on Tuesday, Yemen’s Foreign Minister Riyadh Yassin said Iran’s relationship with the Shi’ite Houthis was now disintegrating.
“The Iranians now have a real problem,” he said, since the nuclear agreement with world powers on July 14 in Vienna now puts pressure on Tehran to sever ties with the Houthis.
The Houthis were now “viewed by Tehran as an undisciplined force due to their inability to fulfill the Iranian plan to take over the Yemeni state.”
The Houthis, for their part, were now “irked with Iran due to its not standing by them during the last period” during which the group has suffered major defeats to Hadi-loyalists in the south of the country, Yassin said.