Yemen PM unhurt in rocket attack on his hotel – minister

ADEN, Yemen – Yemen’s Prime Minister Khaled Bahah escaped unharmed Tuesday, October 6, after a rocket attack killed and wounded an unknown number of people at a hotel in the southern city of Aden, a minister said.

“Prime Minister Khaled Bahah is in good health and was not harmed,” said Nayef al-Bakri, the minister of youth and sports.

A security source and witnesses said the building had been hit by two rockets. 

People had been left “dead and wounded” by the attack, a local official told Agence France-Presse on condition of anonymity, without saying if that included any members of government.

He said one of the rockets hit the hotel’s main entrance and that a third rocket fired at the building had missed and landed in the sea.

Bahah and his ministers have been installed in Aden – declared Yemen’s provisional capital after it was taken back from Shiite Huthi rebels in mid-July – after spending six months in exile in Saudi Arabia.

Columns of smoke were rising from the Al-Qasr hotel in the city’s western suburbs on Tuesday morning, an Agence France-Presse reporter saw.

Ambulances and civil defense forces were on the scene, witnesses said.

A separate rocket attack targeted a nearby barracks used by pro-government forces, residents said, but failed to hit its target. 

Troops loyal to exiled President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, backed by a Saudi-led bombing campaign and troops and military hardware provided by Gulf countries, retook several southern provinces from Huthi rebels earlier this year. – Rappler.com