WHO DG Back in Geneva After Near Miss at Sana’a Airport – Israel Says ‘UN Staff’ Not a Target in Yemen Attack
Humanitarian Crises 26/12/2024 •
Israeli air strike at Yemen’s Sana’a International Airport, Thursday narrowly missed WHO Director General waiting to board a flight.

WHO’s Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was back in Geneva this week, after surviving a near miss from an Israeli Air Force strike on Sana’a International Airport, Thursday.

Airport TV footage aired Monday by the DG on X showed his entourage fleeing the VIP departures hall, where they had been waiting to board a UN flight, as the attack began.  A missile aimed at the airport’s air traffic control tower then sent shrapnel flying in the direction of the passenger terminal.

At least three people were killed while a crew member of the waiting UN plane was injured in the Israeli air strike, the largest to date. It came in response to months of Houthi missile fire into Israel, some 2200 kilometers away, including two strikes on Tel Aviv in the past ten days, which injured over a dozen people and destroyed a school.

Israel – ‘UN assets and staff not a target’

In a first-ever response to the incident on Monday, Israel’s UN Mission in Geneva declared in an X post that “UN assets and UN staff are not a target”. But Israel defended the strike saying it was aimed at “military infrastructure used by the Houthis for their terror activities, including in the Sana’a International Airport….

“Terrorist organizations must stop using civilian infrastructure to cover their terror activities,” the Israeli Mission continued. “The UN and the WHO should recognise terrorist organizations as such, stop justifying their activities, and address the regional situation in a fair and unbiased way. One-state-to-blame policy has never worked out, and never will.”

UN Security Council debate on escalating conflict

In a UN Security Council debate Monday, Khaled Khiari, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, warned about the new escalation of regional tensions, saying that attacks “originating from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen must stop.”  But he also appealed to all sides “to respect and protect civilians and civilian infrastructure. Humanitarian workers must be protected at all times.

“The risks of disruption to vital humanitarian operations at a time when millions of people in Yemen are in need of life-saving assistance are of grave concern,” said Khiari.

But there was no sign that either the UN statements or the Israeli military reprisals would halt the strikes by the ad hoc regime, which is funded by Iran and has pledged to continue its attacks until the declared goal of an  Israeli ceasefire with Gaza is reached.

Late Monday evening, a Houthi missile aimed at Israel’s Tel Aviv and central region sent millions of people scurrying to shelters before it was intercepted, with some fragments showering down on a busy highway. That followed another ballistic missle strike early Saturday morning, aimed at the Negev and Jerusalem regions, and also intercepted.  Unlike the Islamic Hizbullah militia in Lebanon, which operated at close range to Israel’s border, the Houthi forces command vast swathes of distant desert from which they can launch projectiles, and remain unhindered by any other countervailing government force, observers said.

Tedros describes his ordeal

Thursday’s Israeli attack on Yemen targeted Houthi positions in and around the capital, including Hodeidah Port, power and fuel stations, and the airport’s runway and air traffic control tower – rendering the later inoperable.

Sana’a Airport control tower after the Israeli strike Thursday evening.

In his first X post that evening, the WHO Director General described the ordeal tersely, saying only, “As we were about to board our flight from Sana’a, about two hours ago, the airport came under aerial bombardment. One of our plane’s crew members was injured. At least two people were reported killed at the airport. The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge — just a few meters from where we were — and the runway were damaged. We will need to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can leave.

“My UN and @WHO colleagues and I are safe.”

Evacuated safely to Jordan on Friday

On Friday evening, after the WHO DG was evacuated to Amman, Jordan, accompanying the wounded crew member, a member of the UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), he spoke about the experience in more emotional terms, telling BBC Radio:

“It’s a matter of luck, if the missile deviated just slightly it could have been on our head.”

In Sana’a to negotiate with Houthi’s over release of UN workers being held hostage

The WHO DG had been in Sana’a with a United Nations team to negotiate with the Houthis over the release of more than a dozen UN workers who are being held as hostages by the rebel force.

Six staff of the Office of the High Commission of Human Rights (OHCHR) – one woman and five men – were arbitrarily arrested by the de facto Houthi authorities in June together with seven other UN personnel. A further two OHCHR staffers and two colleagues from other UN agencies have been detained and held “incommunicado” since 2021 and 2023 respectively.

The Houthis, a Shia movement aligned with Iran, took over the Yemenite capital of Sana’a in 2015, deposing the president who fled with Yemen’s UN-recognized government to Aden.

Since 7 October 2023, Houthi forces have been firing missiles intermittently at Israel, in support of the Palestinian Hamas fighting Israel in Gaza, as well as interrupting international shipping lines. On December 21, a Houthi ballistic missile fell in a Tel Aviv city park injuring some 16 people after Israel’s much-vaunted Iron Dome anti-missile system failed to intercept the projectile.  Two days earlier, another missile destroyed a school in the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan, although there were no injuries because structure was empty at the time.

Israeli media said the attack Thursday evening was the largest ever and included some 100 Air Force aircraft.

Speaking in a video statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said: “A short while ago, the Air Force attacked targets of the Houthi terrorist organization in Yemen, both along the coast and in Sana. We are determined to cut off this terrorist arm of Iran’s axis of evil. We will persist until we get the job done.”

Updated Monday 30.12.24

Image Credits: YNet/Yemenite TV , Al-Estiklal .

Combat the infodemic in health information and support health policy reporting from the global South. Our growing network of journalists in Africa, Asia, Geneva and New York connect the dots between regional realities and the big global debates, with evidence-based, open access news and analysis. To make a personal or organisational contribution click here on PayPal.