Rusia construye un aeropuerto en Laos junto con entrenamiento militar

Russia to Build Airport and Military Facility in Laos

Xieng Khouang province of Laos (image : GoogleMaps)

Russia to Build Airport in Laos, Train Armed Forces in Sign of Strengthening Military Ties

Russian troops have been clearing an area of around 500 hectares of unexploded ordnance, or UXO, in Laos’ Xieng Khouang province with plans to build a new airport and military facility as part of an expansion of military aid to the impoverished Southeast Asian nation, according to Lao officials.

A Russian demining team has been working with Lao counterparts to clear the UXO since Dec. 5, provincial officials recently told RFA’s Lao Service, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans with the media.

“The Russians came here to build a military airport on the other side of the Plain of Jars,” one of the officials said, referring to the archeological landscape in the Xieng Khouang Plateau that was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2019.

“They’re currently clearing the UXO and then they’re going to upgrade the existing airport, making it larger and more beautiful.”

Another Xieng Khouang official, who is a provincial military officer, provided further details about the new airport to RFA.

“The Russian and Lao armed forces together are building this new airport that will be larger than the existing one and will be divided in two different zones,” he said.

“One zone is for Lao and Russian military use and the other is for civilian use.”


New airport divided into two purpose, one for military use and the other for civilian use (photo : KienThuc)

The officer said that the Russian military intends to provide substantial assistance to Laos going forward, including with training and developing the latter’s armed forces.

“Some work on the new airport has already begun, but the actual construction will not start anytime soon because the UXO clearance will take some time,” he said.

“Once the UXO has been cleared, we’ll lay underground powerlines. We’ll do our work step by step.”

Besides the airport, the Russians intend to expand military cooperation with Laos that will include building a facility to train Lao troops on how to use Russian military equipment, according to a report by Russian news agency Sputniknews.com.

A former senior government official in Laos told RFA that the two sides are expanding cooperation in line with an agreement they have in place on security and defense, as well as the new airport.

“In the agreements, most cooperation would include training and teaching military techniques to the Lao armed forces,” said the former official, who also declined to be named.

“We had more cooperation and more Russian military presence in Laos during the Soviet era,” he added.

RFA spoke with an official at the Lao Ministry of Foreign Affairs who claimed not to know anything about the Russian military aid projects.

 VOA

Fuerza saudí-emiratíes toman aeropuerto rebelde en Yemen

Saudi-led forces seize rebel-held airport in Yemen's Hodeida - military

Forces allied to the Saudi-led coalition say they have entered Hodeida airport as part of an assault to retake the port city. Fears are rising of a new humanitarian crisis if food imports, from the port, are disrupted.



DW

Soldiers from an Arab alliance seized the international airport in the Houthi-held port city of Hodeida on Saturday, officials loyal to Yemen's exiled government said.

Aid workers and rights advocates said areas close to the airport remained the scene of intense fighting, which prevented thousands of people from leaving the Red Sea city, which has a population of 600,000.

Other government officials and witnesses later said coalition forces had not yet fully taken control of the airport. They said fighting was heavy just outside the airport gates.

The pro-alliance Yemeni military, meanwhile, said that soldiers were working to clear mines and the last remaining rebels from land close to the airport, which is on the south side of the city.

Troops from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are leading ground forces in the latest assault to recapture the country's main gateway for food shipments, which began on Wednesday.


Saudi-led troops look to retake Yemeni port of Hodeida

Biggest battle yet

UAE troops are being bolstered by militiamen and soldiers backing Yemen's exiled government, while Saudi Arabia is providing air support for what is being described as the biggest battle in the country's three-year civil war.

Yemen's Shiite rebels, the Houthis, who also hold the country's capital of Sanaa, did not immediately acknowledge losing the airport.

So far, fighting has yet to enter Hodeida's downtown or its crucial port.

Humanitarian crisis

The Arab coalition has ignored advice from international aid groups, who say Yemen is already on the brink of famine and any shutdown of Hodeida's port could risk tipping millions of civilians into starvation.

Some 70 percent of Yemen's food enters via the port, as well as the bulk of humanitarian aid and fuel supplies, which around two-thirds of the country's 27 million population depends on.

Calls for restraint as key Yemeni port attacked

Saudi Arabia, which leads the Arab coalition to restore the internationally recognized Yemeni government, defended its decision to launch the assault.

It said the port was continuing to provide millions of dollars in duties for the Houthis, who they claim were also importing weapons through the facility.

The Saudi-led alliance says it can swiftly capture the port, the only one the Houthis control, without major disruption to aid supplies.

Later on Saturday, the United Nations envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, arrived in the rebel-held capital Sanaa for talks on the conflict in Hodeida, the Agence France-Presse news agency reported.

He was expected to call for Houthi leaders to cede control of the port to a UN-supervised committee, and to avoid further fighting between rebels and the Arab coalition.

More than 10,000 people have been killed during Yemen's civil war. The Saudi-led alliance intervened in 2015 to thwart what many countries in the Middle East see as efforts by their archfoe, Iran, to dominate the region.

Western nations say Tehran has supplied the Houthis with weapons, from assault rifles to the ballistic missiles they have fired deep into Saudi Arabia, including at the capital, Riyadh.

mm/jlw (AP, Reuters)

Aeropuerto El Palomar se incorpora a la oferta de cabotaje

El Palomar fue incorporado al Sistema Nacional de Aeropuertos

En el aeropuerto del oeste del Gran Buenos Aires planean operar empresas low cost como FlyBondi y Norwegian Air, que este año fueron habilitadas por el Gobierno para volar en territorio argentino
Infobae



El aeropuerto de El Palomar fue formalmente incorporado al Sistema Nacional de Aeropuertos (SNA), indica el decreto 1092/2017, que se publicó en el Boletín Oficial de este martes con la firma del presidente Mauricio Macri y del jefe de Gabinete Marcos Peña.

En el aeropuerto del oeste del Gran Buenos Aires planean operar empresas low cost, como FlyBondi y Norwegian Air, que este año fueron habilitadas por el Gobierno para volar en territorio argentino.

"La incorporación (…) constituye asimismo un instrumento para el desarrollo de nuestro país, atento la necesidad de afrontar (…) las recientes políticas relativas a la expansión del mercado aerocomercial", dice uno de los considerandos de la medida.



El texto oficial indica que la Administración Nacional de Aviación Civil (ANAC) pidió la incorporación de la Base Aérea "a los fines de que pueda ser objeto de la modernización de la infraestructura aeroportuaria necesaria para afrontar las recientes políticas relativas a la expansión del mercado aerocomercial" y que la documentación técnica que se adjuntó fue analizada por el Organismo Regulador del Sistema Nacional de Aeropuertos (ORSNA), que determinó la "no objeción definitiva" a la integración.

"El Estado Nacional debe adoptar las medidas pertinentes para lograr una adecuada infraestructura para el transporte aéreo comercial, tanto interno como internacional, y asegurar la vinculación a través de ese medio con los demás países del mundo y la intercomunicación de las distintas regiones de nuestro país entre sí", agregó el Ejecutivo.

El Ministerio de Transporte avanza en estos días con las tareas de renovación del aeropuerto militar, que una de las compañías pretendía  utilizar a partir de enero. "El Palomar será para cualquier empresa que quiera volar, sea low cost o no", había asegurado Guillermo Dietrich cuando confirmó que la obra contaría con inversión estatal.



La empresa Flybondi fue la primera interesada en operar 100% en el aeropuerto, incluso lo nombra como centro de operaciones desde el año pasado.

También está detrás de El Palomar Norwegian, que semanas atrás obtuvo la aprobación de 152 rutas para operar y en junio próximo comenzará a volar en servicios de cabotaje. Así lo había manifestado Matías Maciel, director de Comunicaciones y Asuntos Públicos de la compañía: "Si efectivamente prospera, Norwegian considerará nuevos destinos que no contemplamos con el esquema actual. Así que es una iniciativa cambiaría mucho el escenario, y (sería) una gran oportunidad para nosotros. Para ello sería imprescindible una pista más larga en El Palomar, de 3 mil metros".