Overnight explosions rocked a Yemeni airbase, destroying three fighter jets and damaging several others.

Overnight explosions rocked a Yemeni airbase, destroying three fighter jets and damaging several others.

"Unknown assailants appear to have planted explosive devices in the fighter jets which were loaded with ammunition in preparation for a combat mission planned for Monday morning," a military official said Monday on condition of anonymity.

"Three fighter jets went up in flames and several others were damaged by the explosions," said an aviation official from Sanaa's International Airport just adjacent to the targeted military base.

The military official told AFP that the planes had been due to undertake a combat mission over the Arhab region, the northern gateway to the capital Sanaa, just 40 kilometers south.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, in which apparently no one was hurt.

The elite Republican Guard units controlled by President Ali Abdullah Saleh's son Ahmad have a strong presence in Arhab and have so far prevented troops from defected General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar's First Armored Division, stationed further north, from streaming into the capital.

Anti-government protests that have swept Yemen since January have triggered an unprecedented political crisis that has left the impoverished country's economy in shambles and its government weak and fractured.