Yemen's internationally recognised government accused the Houthis of firing at least two ballistic missiles and several drones at Aden airport on Wednesday, with one missile landing near the runway minutes before a Yemeni flight from Cairo was scheduled to touch down. The Ministry of Transport cancelled the landing and diverted the aircraft to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Two planes were removed from the tarmac and the terminal was evacuated. The Houthis claimed they were targeting "Saudi military supplies" arriving at the Badr camp near the airport. Separately, the Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted and destroyed a Houthi ballistic missile north of Riyadh. Coalition spokesperson Major-General Turki al-Maliki said intelligence systems over Sanaa were tracking the launch platform and promised to destroy it. The Houthis separately claimed to have targeted Saudi international airports in Riyadh and Abha on Tuesday and overnight into Wednesday. The escalation unfolds against a backdrop of intensified ground fighting. Saudi-backed government forces have launched a counteroffensive to retake the Red Sea port of Mocha and areas surrounding the Bab al-Mandeb strait, one of the world's most critical maritime chokepoints. Fighting has concentrated in the southwestern province of Taiz. Al Jazeera's correspondent in Sanaa described "all-out battles" for highlands and mountains east of Bab al-Mandeb, noting that control of the wider vicinity would confer dominant military control over the region's western flank. The regional footprint is expanding. Pakistan and Türkiye agreed on Monday to activate "deterrence measures" under a mutual defence pact with Saudi Arabia and to rapidly deploy forces to the Gulf kingdom to counter Houthi attacks. This transforms what was a bilateral Saudi-Houthi confrontation into a multi-state security operation, with at least three external military actors now formally committed. The trigger chain runs through the broader US-Israel war on Iran, which has intensified the Houthi campaign. The Iran-supported group has held the capital Sanaa since 2014 and operates as a de facto state across northern Yemen. Aden airport is the main international gateway for parts of Yemen outside Houthi control and serves as the seat of the internationally recognised government — making it both a strategic and symbolic target. What nearly happened at Aden airport illustrates the civilian cost architecture of this war. A ballistic missile hitting a runway minutes before a passenger plane lands is not a military operation with collateral risk — it is a civilian infrastructure attack timed for maximum danger. The Ministry of Transport's statement was blunt: "This incident could easily have turned a civilian flight into a horrific humanitarian disaster, claiming the lives of dozens of innocent people in an instant." The pattern here is classic escalation lock-in. Each side's offensive validates the other's defensive rationale. Saudi coalition forces push toward Mocha to secure the Red Sea coast; Houthis target Saudi and government infrastructure to demonstrate reach; external powers activate defence pacts to counter Houthi missiles. No off-ramp is visible, and the activation of the Pakistan-Türkiye-Saudi trilateral pact adds institutional momentum to continued escalation.
