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ADEN, Yemen — A large explosion at the airport in the southern Yemeni city of Aden killed at least 16 people on Wednesday, shortly before a plane carrying new government officials landed there, officials said.
The source of the blast was not immediately clear, and no group claimed responsibility for the explosion.
No one on the government plane was hurt, but officials at the scene said they saw bodies lying on the tarmac and elsewhere at the airport. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
The Yemeni communications minister, Naguib al-Awg, who was on the government plane, said that he heard two explosions, suggesting they were drone attacks. Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed and the other officials were quickly whisked away from the airport to the presidential palace in the city.
“It would have been a disaster if the plane was bombed,” Mr. al-Awg said, insisting the plane was the target of the attack because it was supposed to land earlier.
Mohammed al-Roubid, the deputy chief of Aden’s health office, said that at least 16 people were killed and 60 wounded in the explosion.
Images from the scene shared on social media showed rubble and broken glass strewn near the airport building and at least two lifeless bodies, one of them charred, lying on the ground. In another image, one man was trying to help another with torn clothing to get up from the ground.
The ministers were returning to Aden after being sworn in last week as part of a reshuffle following a deal with rival southern separatists. Yemen’s internationally recognized government has worked mostly from self-imposed exile in the Saudi capital of Riyadh during a civil war that began in 2014.
Yemen’s embattled president, Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, in exile in Saudi Arabia, announced the cabinet reshuffle earlier this month.
It was seen as a major step toward closing a dangerous rift between Mr. Hadi’s government and southern separatists backed by the United Arab Emirates. The Saudi-backed government is at war with the Iran-allied Houthi rebels, who control most of northern Yemen as well as the country’s capital, Sanaa.
Last year, the Houthis fired a missile at a military parade of new fighters of a militia loyal to the United Arab Emirates at a military base in Aden, killing dozens.
Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, has been engulfed in civil war since 2014, when the Shiite Houthi rebels overran the north and Sanaa. The following year, a Saudi-led military coalition intervened to wage war on the Houthis and restore Mr. Hadi’s government to power.
The war has killed more than 112,000 people, including thousands of civilians, and resulted in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
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