2023-06-17 17:44:59
A first since 2016
Airliner leaves Yemen’s capital for Saudi Arabia
Seven years after the blockade of Sanaa airport by the military coalition led by Riyadh, a Yemenia Airways aircraft carrying pilgrims flew to the kingdom on Saturday.
Posted
A Yemenia Airways plane carrying 277 passengers took off around 8 p.m. (7 p.m. in Switzerland). (illustrative image)
The first commercial flight from Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital to Saudi Arabia since 2016 took off on Saturday, carrying Hajj pilgrims, the latest sign of easing tensions after years of war.
“Very happy and relieved”
The flight is the first since the military coalition closed Sanaa airport in August 2016, more than a year after the start of Saudi Arabia’s military campaign to root out the Houthis.
Vast humanitarian crisis
Hundreds of thousands of people died in the fighting or from indirect causes such as lack of food or water in what the United Nations calls one of the most major humanitarian crises in the world. But despite coalition bombing and ground fighting, the Houthis, who seized control of Sanaa in 2014 ousting the internationally recognized government, rule large swaths of the country.
One of the five pillars of Islam, the hajj which will take place this year at the end of June, consists of a series of rites to be performed over five days, in Mecca and the surrounding region, by any Muslim who has the means, at least once in his life.
(AFP)
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