AFP
Sanaa
An attack on Houthi rebel leaders in Yemen’s capital claimed by the Islamic State group has killed at least 28 people, medics said yesterday, in the latest anti-Shia assault by the extremists.
Yemen was previously the preserve of IS’s rival Al Qaeda, which controls swathes of the south and east, but since March the group has claimed a string of high-profile attacks.
The car bomb late Monday targeted two brothers, both rebel chiefs, during a gathering to mourn the death of a relative, a security source said.
Eight women were among the dead.
IS said online it had organised the attack on a “Shia nest”.
The group considers Shias heretics and has repeatedly targeted them, not only in Yemen but across the region.
Just Friday, a Saudi IS suicide bomber killed 26 people and wounded 227 in a Shia mosque in Kuwait.
In Yemen, IS claimed a car bombing that killed two people outside a Shia mosque in Sanaa on June 20 and a series of attacks in the capital four days earlier that killed 31.
IS, which on Monday marked the first anniversary of its declaration of a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, launched its Yemen campaign in March with a series of bombings of Shia mosques that killed 142 people.
The attacks have overshadowed the operations of rival Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula which overran Mukalla, capital of Hadramout province in southeast Yemen, in March.
Washington still regards AQAP as the network’s most dangerous branch and has kept up a drone war against its leaders inside Yemen.
But analysts say IS is now clearly in the ascendant.
IS is “in the process of supplanting AQAP, which is becoming just one of a number of forces in the Sunni tribal camp in southern Yemen”, said Mathieu Guidere, Islamic studies professor at France’s University of Toulouse.
The Iran-backed Houthi rebels have seized vast swathes of Yemen since launching an offensive last July, forcing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia.
Yemen’s official Saba news agency, controlled by the Houthis, reported early yesterday that the rebels had fired a Scud missile at Al Salil military base in Riyadh province, deep inside Saudi Arabia.
“This is another message to the forces of oppression,” a military spokesman was quoted as saying, promising “new surprises in the coming days”.
Saudi Arabia denied a Scud had hit its territory.
“We’re not aware of anything. Not a square metre was damaged in Saudi Arabia,” an official in Riyadh said, adding there had been no radar contact and no missile intercepted.
A Saudi civil defence spokesman, however, said two civilians were lightly wounded yesterday when a projectile fired from inside Yemen hit their house near the border.
Bombardments and skirmishes along the border have killed at least 45 Saudi troops and civilians, including a soldier hit by rebel fire on Monday.
In the southern port of Aden, Yemen’s second city, fighting raged yesterday between the rebels and their opponents.
A pregnant woman and two children were among 13 people killed over the past 48 hours, medics said. Another 216 people were wounded.
Oil tanks at the city’s refinery were still ablaze after being hit by rebel fire on Saturday.
Saudi-led aircraft carried out 20 strikes in support of loyalists, a local official said.
People gather at the site of the car bomb attack in Sanaa yesterday.
