Human Rights Watch said in a press release that the Israeli airstrikes on Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport on May 6 and May 28, 2025, were apparently unlawful indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks on civilian objects and should be investigated as war crimes.
The Israeli attacks destroyed all commercial passenger aircraft operating out of the Sanaa airport, cutting off civilians’ ability to travel and limiting the ability of humanitarian aid and personnel to enter.
“The Sanaa airport is a critical lifeline for Yemeni civilians, many of whom rely on the airport as their only means to access needed medical care,” said Niku Jafarnia, Yemen and Bahrain researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Israeli military has now severed that lifeline, leaving many Yemenis without their primary point of access to the outside world.”
Israeli forces’ attacks destroyed four aircraft of Yemenia Airways—the only airline that provides commercial flights for Sanaa passengers—and damaged and destroyed significant portions of the airport. Four other aircraft, including a cargo plane, were also destroyed, according to Human Rights Watch analysis of satellite imagery.
On May 15, the first UN flight since the May 6 attack landed at Sanaa airport. Between then and the attack on May 28, commercial flights also resumed. Flights have not resumed since the second attack.
Israeli forces carried out the second attack on the morning of May 28. Civilians, including pilgrims awaiting a flight to Saudi Arabia and staff from the humanitarian group Médicins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders or MSF), were at the airport at the time of the attack, though none were harmed.
UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations have highlighted the importance of the Sanaa airport to civilians. After Israeli forces’ attack in December, UN Resident Coordinator for Yemen Julien Harneis, who was in the airport on the day of the attack, stated that the airport “is a civilian location that is used by the United Nations.” He also said that the airport was “absolutely vital” to continued humanitarian aid for Yemen.
Harneis told Human Rights Watch: “Health services in Yemen are rudimentary. You have an older population in Yemen with diabetes, cancer, non-communicable diseases for which they’re unable to get treatment in Yemen. The airport has always been vital to getting those people out.”
The laws of war prohibit deliberate, indiscriminate, or disproportionate attacks on civilians and civilian objects. An attack not directed at a specific military objective is indiscriminate. An attack is disproportionate if the expected civilian loss is excessive compared to the anticipated military gain of the attack. Attacks that can be expected to cause more harm to civilians and civilian structures than the anticipated military gain of the attack are prohibited. Deliberate attacks on objects indispensable to survival are war crimes.