Smoke billows following a reported airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition in the Yemeni capital Sana’a, on November 27, 2020. (Photo by AFP)

Saudi warplanes have bombarded targets in Yemen’s capital Sana’a, a day after a large explosion struck the airport in the southern port city of Aden as a plane carrying members of the newly formed Saudi-backed cabinet landed there.

Residents said Thursday’s coalition airstrikes hit Sana’a International Airport and several other sites in and around the city.

They said loud blasts were heard and warplanes flew overhead for several hours.

Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported that the warplanes struck at least 15 locations in different districts in the capital. There were no immediate reports of casualties and the extent of damage caused.

On Wednesday, at least 26 people were killed and more than 50 were wounded in Aden airport attack.

The source of the explosion was not immediately clear and no group claimed responsibility for attacking the airport. No one on the Saudi-backed government plane was hurt.

Hours after the attack, a second explosion was heard around Aden’s Maasheq presidential palace where cabinet members of Saudi-backed former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, including prime minister Maeen Abdulmalik, as well as Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed al-Jaber, had been taken to safely.

The Saudi-led coalition accused the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement of the attacks on Aden’s airport and the presidential palace, a charge Ansarullah strongly dismisses.

Aden has been a scene of bloody fighting between Saudi-backed pro-Hadi loyalists and the UAE-backed separatists in the Southern Transitional Council (STC).

The STC forces seek independence for southern Yemen. They declared self-rule in Aden in April, triggering fierce clashes with Hadi’s forces and complicating United Nations efforts to forge a permanent ceasefire in the overall conflict.

‘Over 6,000 Yemeni women, children killed in Saudi aggression’

Separately, a Yemeni rights organization says the war being waged by Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies, mainly the United Arab Emirates, has claimed the lives of more than 6,000 women and children, and left many more injured in Yemen.

Entesaf Organization for Women’s and Children’s Rights said in a report published on Thursday that a total of 2,392 women as well as 3,796 children have been killed in Yemen ever since the Riyadh regime and a coalition of its allies launched the brutal war on the impoverished nation more than five years ago.

The report added that 2,798 women and 4,096 children have also sustained injuries during the mentioned period.

The organization then condemned the shameful international silence on violation of the international law and the United Nations Charter in Yemen, emphasizing that such principles are aimed at protecting civilians, mainly women and children.

It finally held the Saudi-led military alliance responsible for all crimes and violations against innocent Yemeni civilians, especially women and children.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the war on Yemen in March 2015, with the goal of bringing Hadi’s government back to power and crushing the popular Ansarullah movement.

Last month, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) put the death toll from the Saudi war on Yemen at 233,000.

The popular Houthi Ansarullah movement, backed by armed forces, has been defending Yemen against the Saudi-led alliance, preventing the aggressors from fulfilling the objectives of the atrocious war.