Yemen Monitor/Newsroom/Agencies:
The Director-General of the World Health Organization has said he and his colleagues “narrowly escaped death” when they were caught up in an Israeli airstrike on an airport in Yemen.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he felt “completely exposed” during the attack which killed at least six people.
He and other UN staff were leaving Sana’a on Thursday after a trip to negotiate the release of UN detainees and assess the humanitarian situation in the country when the airport was bombed.
The Israeli military said it carried out “intelligence-based strikes on military targets” belonging to the Houthis.
Dr Tedros said on Saturday: “It was very chaotic, as you know, people were running around in panic.”
He added: “There was no shelter, so we were completely exposed. It’s a matter of luck, otherwise if the missile had deviated a little bit it could have landed on our heads.”
He added: “My colleague actually said, after all that, we narrowly escaped death.”
The head of the WHO – who has led the organisation since 2017 and was a regular public face during the Covid pandemic – said his presence at the airport was public knowledge before the strike.
But he added: “It doesn’t matter whether I was there or not. Any civilian life is a life – my life is no better than any other human being’s life.”
Dr Tedros said the airport was a civilian facility and therefore should not have been attacked by Israel.
