Aden airport rocket attack December 30 2020

Summary
Two explosions from projectiles struck Aden airport whilst members of new 'unity government' were being received as they disembarked from their flight from Saudi Arabia. 28 people were killed. The unity government was the result of a power sharing deal, under the reanimated Riyadh accord, between the exiled Saudi coalition backed government and the UAE backed Southern Transition Council. UK and US officials have blamed the Houthis, with the attack being cited as justification in the outgoing US State Dept's listing of Ansarallah as a terrorist organisation. This attribution remains highly questionable. It is plausible that the attack stems from a faction to the conflict in South Yemen, rather than the northern based Ansarallah.

See also UAE Saudi proxy conflict: southern seperatists and Hadi government in exile

Analysis
Bellingcat and partners 
 * All Eyes On Aden, As Saudi Arabia Shows Inability To Protect Its Yemeni Puppet Government - Southfront, December 31, 2021
 * Investigating details of rocket attack on Aden airport - ISWNews, January 5, 2021
 * 2020 Aden Attacks (Wikipedia)
 * Attack on Aden International Airport - Yemeni Archive, February 9, 2021
 * Rockets over Yemen: Inside the Houthis’ Botched Attack on Aden Airport - Bellingcat, February 9, 2021
 * The attack on the airport of a busy port city was caught on multiple videos. But so were a number of missile launches from Houthi-held cities to the North-West of Aden — on the very same day. An analysis of open source information from these locations suggests that, despite their denials, the Houthis were most likely responsible for the attack on Aden airport.


 * The videos of launches referenced by Bellingcat appear to be of rudimentary rockets, like the Qassam, with a maximum range of at most 20km (Qassam specification here shows 20 km range at most; also compare with Grad, with comparable parameters, which after long development history in several countries achieved ranges from 13 to 52 km, with early modifications range of about 20 km). The sites geolocated are at much greater distance (136km+) from Aden airport. As presented, their investigation and its weak conclusion do not account for the attack. While range is sensitive to parameters (weight ratios, air resistance, etc), geolocated distance appears to be well outside the expected range of the device presented on video and photos; the latter can be estimated as about 20 km, or less.

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