The head of the World Health Organization said Friday he was not sure he would survive an airstrike by Israel on Yemen’s main airport during a series of attacks on the Iran-aligned Houthi movement a day earlier.
Speaking after his experience at Sanaa International Airport on Thursday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the explosions that shook the building were so deafening that the sounds were still ringing in his ears more than a day later.
Tedros said it became immediately clear that the airport had been attacked, adding that people were “disorderly running” from the site after about four explosions, one of which was “dangerously close” to the site of the explosion. He was sitting near the departure lounge.
“I wasn’t sure I would actually survive because it was so close, just a few meters from where we were,” he told Reuters. “The slightest deviation could have led to a direct hit.”
Tedros said he and his colleagues remained stranded at the airport for the next hour as they thought drones were flying overhead, raising concerns they could open fire again. He said he and his colleagues saw missile fragments amid the debris.
“There was no shelter there. Nothing. So you’re just exposed, just waiting for anything to happen,” he said.
The Israeli strikes on Yemen come after the Houthis repeatedly fired drones and missiles toward Israel in what they describe as an act of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later said that Israel was “just getting started” with the Houthis.
The Houthi-controlled Sabah news agency said three people were killed in attacks on the airport and three in Hodeidah, while 40 others were wounded in the attacks.
Speaking by telephone from Jordan, where he flew in on Friday to help evacuate a seriously injured UN colleague to the airport for further medical attention, Tedros said he had received no warning. That Israel might be about to attack the airport.
The injured man, who worked for the United Nations Humanitarian Air Service, is now “recovering” and in stable condition, he said.
Tedros traveled to Yemen over Christmas to try to negotiate the release of UN staff and others held there. He acknowledged that he and his colleagues knew the trip was risky given the high tensions between Israel and the Houthis.
But the opportunity to work for the release of UN personnel was such that he felt he had to take it, said Tedros, Ethiopia’s former foreign minister.
He said talks with Yemeni authorities had gone well and that they were optimistic that the 16 UN staff, as well as staff at diplomatic missions and NGO workers held there, could be freed.
He declined to be drawn into the blame game over the attack, but said his itinerary had been shared publicly and expressed surprise that civilian infrastructure should have been targeted.
“So a civilian airport has to be protected, whether I’m in it or not,” he said, before noting that there was “nothing special” about what he had encountered in Yemen. “One of my colleagues said that we narrowly escaped death. I’m just human. So I feel for people who are facing the same thing every day. But at least it made me Allowed to feel however they feel.”
“I am concerned about our world, where it is going,” Tedros said, urging world leaders to work together to end global conflicts. “As far as I remember, I have never seen the world in such a dangerous state.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
