ADEN, Yemen, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) -- An international team arrived on Wednesday in Yemen's southern port city of Aden to investigate the deadly bombings that struck the city's airport at the end of December 2020, a government official told Xinhua.
A UN plane landed at the Aden International Airport carrying "senior international experts" to investigate "the missile attack on the city's sole airport," the local government source said on condition of anonymity.
The source confirmed that the experts instantly inspected the site of the bombings at the airport upon their arrival and interviewed officials in charge of the targeted airport.
The investigating team, accompanied by local security forces, headed to the presidential palace in Aden to meet the Saudi-backed Yemeni government based in the city, he added.
Aden's sole International Airport was struck by three huge explosions on Dec. 30 last year, upon the arrival of the new power-sharing government members from Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh.
The deadly bombings against the airport killed and wounded more than 130 people, including local officials, civilians, military personnel, and three employees of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In mid-January, pro-government Interior Minister Ibrahim Haydan declared during a press conference in Aden that "the preliminary results showed evidence that Iranian and Lebanese experts were behind the missiles used in the terrorist attack."
Haydan headed the investigation committee which was formed by Yemeni President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi following the airport attack.
He noted that his committee had collected information from different sources and discovered that the ballistic missiles were launched from a site in the Houthi-controlled area 135 km away from the airport.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Saudi-backed Yemeni government accused the Houthi rebels of being behind it.
Senior officials of the Houthi group denied it and blamed on Yemeni military factions linked to the Saudi-led coalition in the government-controlled southern provinces.
Aden is considered Yemen's temporary capital where the Saudi-backed Yemeni government has been based since 2015.
The impoverished Arab country has been locked into a civil war since late 2014, when the Houthi rebels overran much of the country and seized all northern provinces, including the capital Sanaa. Enditem
