Aden is a front again: missiles over the palace
The Houthis fired at the airport one day after it reopened and at the compound where Yemen’s recognized government sits. What is being contested is the state’s own address, and the bill lands on residents stockpiling food and looking for a way out.
Two explosions broke over Aden on Friday, October 30, 2026, as Houthi missiles came down near the Al-Ma’ashiq palace, the compound where Yemen’s internationally recognized government sits, a local security official told Xinhua. The same official said air defenses engaged drones over government buildings. The army’s spokesman, Majed al-Nuzaili, said the Houthis fired ballistic missiles at the palace and at Aden International Airport, Anadolu Agency reported. The airport had reopened the day before.
It had been closed since a strike on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, wounded two civilians and damaged the runway, and the Houthis had warned people to leave the facility beforehand, saying a Saudi military cargo aircraft there was carrying weapons. That claim has not been independently verified. What the sequence establishes is narrower and harder to argue with: the government’s airport opened on Thursday, October 29, 2026, and was under fire again the next morning.
The compound itself was hit on October 15, 2026, when five missiles struck Al-Ma’ashiq, killing five people and wounding 16. Fifteen days later it was the target again, this time alongside the airport. The Houthis claimed the attacks on several sites in Aden at once — the airport, military camps, the port and the palace, Al Jazeera reported — which is the difference between a raid and a campaign.
A government that cannot keep its airport open two days running is being asked to hold territory, fight a war and negotiate a peace from the same compound.
Residents are reading it that way. Al Jazeera found people in the city stockpiling food and working out where to go if the front moves into the streets, in the mood one of them described as needing a plan B. Aden became the seat of the recognized government after the Houthis took Sanaa in 2014, and the Saudi-led coalition has been fighting to restore that government since 2015. In recent weeks the cross-border exchange has thickened: Saudi strikes on Houthi-held areas in the north, and Houthi missiles and drones fired at Saudi Arabia.
The record available does not show whether Tehran directs this phase of the campaign. What it does show is a calendar of its own. While the Gulf’s mediators shuttle between capitals over the shipping lanes and the wider war, a front has opened at the one place where the Yemeni state still has an address — and missiles have arrived on days when the airport is operating.
What the month leaves open is what the government in Aden actually controls if its airport cannot stay open for two consecutive days, and who is expected to hold that ground while the coalition’s attention sits on the Red Sea and the talks over Iran. Those who live under the missiles have already answered the question for themselves: they are packing, and they are not waiting for the answer from the compound.