Author: Dave Graham
ZURICH (Reuters) – The head of the World Health Organization said on Friday he was unsure whether he would survive an airstrike on Yemen’s main airport carried out by Israel a day earlier in a series of attacks on the Iran-linked Houthi movement.
Speaking after the ordeal at Sana’a International Airport on Thursday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the explosions that rocked the building were so deafening that his ears were still ringing more than a day later.
Tedros said it quickly became apparent the airport was under attack, describing people “running in disarray” around the site after about four explosions, one of which was “alarmingly” close to where he was sitting near the departure lounge.
“I wasn’t sure I could survive because it was so close, a few meters from where we were,” he told Reuters. “A slight deviation could have resulted in a direct hit.”
Tedros said he and his colleagues remained at the airport for the next hour as what he thought were drones flew overhead, raising concerns that they might open fire again. Among the debris, he and his colleagues saw fragments of a missile, he said.
“There (was) no shelter. Nothing. So you’re just exposed, just waiting for anything to happen,” he said.
The Israeli strikes on Yemen came after the Houthis repeatedly fired drones and missiles at Israel in what they described as acts of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said afterward that Israel was “just getting started” with the Houthis.
The Houthi-controlled Saba news agency reported that three people were killed in the attacks on the airport and three were killed in Hodeida, while 40 others were wounded in the attacks.
Speaking by phone from Jordan, where he flew on Friday to help evacuate a seriously injured UN colleague at the airport for further treatment, Tedros said he had received no warning that Israel might attack the airport.
The injured man, who worked for the UN Humanitarian Air Service, is now “okay” and in a stable condition, he said.
Tedros traveled to Yemen over Christmas to try to negotiate the release of UN staff and others held there. He admitted that he and his colleagues knew the trip was risky in light of the high tensions between Israel and the Houthis.
But the opportunity to work to free UN staff was so great that they believed they had to take it, said Tedros, Ethiopia’s former foreign minister.
He said that talks with the Yemeni authorities had gone well and that he saw a chance that 16 UN staff, as well as employees of diplomatic missions and non-governmental organizations held there, could be freed.
He declined to take part in the allegations of the attack, but said his itinerary had been made public and expressed surprise that civilian infrastructure was targeted.
“So a civilian airport needs to be protected whether I’m in it or not,” he said, before noting there was “nothing special” about what he faced in Yemen. “One of my colleagues said we narrowly escaped death. I’m just a human being. I feel for those who face the same thing every day. But at least it allowed me to feel the way they feel.”
“I am concerned about our world, where it is going,” Tedros added, urging world leaders to work together to end global conflicts. “I have never… as far as I can remember, seen the world truly in such a perilous state.”
