Yemen announces temporary resumption of UN flights into Sana’a days after Saudi attack

Yemen’s civil aviation authority has announced a temporary resumption of aid flights by the United Nations to Sana’a International Airport, a week after Saudi aerial assaults put the facility out of operation.

“The civil aviation authority announces the resumption of UN and other organization flights into Sana’a airport on a temporary basis,” Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported on Tuesday.

“The Foreign Ministry was contacted to notify the UN and all international organizations that Sana’a airport was ready to receive flights.”

The aviation authority said in a statement that it had taken the measure “after the malfunctions in communications and navigational devices were temporarily fixed,” according to Saba news agency.

It also complained that it could not guarantee the long-term continuity of these old devices, calling on the UN to help the entry of new devices that it had purchased.

The airport has been closed to civilian flights since 2015, after the popular Houthis took over Sana’a, but UN planes have been permitted to land there.

On December 20, the Saudi-led collation targeted the airport, causing severe damage to the facility and a halt to its flights. 

Saudi-led strikes prevent UN aid from reaching Yemenis: Report

Report says Saudi-led airstrikes are preventing delivery of UN-provided relief supplies to Yemen’s lifeline airport.

Khaled Al-Shayef, director general of Sana’a airport, said the latest Saudi air raids completely destroyed the aviation school and the quarantine building, as well as hangars and warehouses where the humanitarian aid shipments to the Yemeni people are kept.

Since the closure of the airport, more than 100,000 patients, who had been denied travel abroad for treatment, have died, he told IRNA, warning that more patients will lose their lives or face permanent disabilities if the siege on Yemen continues.

Shayef also stressed that the invading coalition seeks to intensify the siege of the Yemeni nation through the bombing of Sana’a airport.

Saudi Arabia launched the devastating war on its southern neighbor in March 2015 in collaboration with a number of its allied states and with arms and logistics support from the US and several Western states.

The aim was to return to power the former Riyadh-backed regime and crush the popular Ansarullah movement which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective government in Yemen.

The war has stopped well shy of all of its goals, despite killing tens of thousands of Yemenis and turning entire Yemen into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Yemeni forces have in recent months gone from strength to strength against the Saudi-led invaders and left Riyadh and its allies bogged down in Yemen.

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