Governor of Yemen’s port city of Aden has been killed in a auto bomb attack on Sunday, media reports said.
Advertisement
A statement posted on Twitter by the jihadist group said it was behind a blast that hit the convoy of Jaafar Saad in the Tawahi neighbourhood of the major port city, killing him and eight of his bodyguards.
Six bodyguards were also killed in the attack.
Residents and a local official said before on Sunday a suicide bomber rammed his vehicle into the governor’s automobile. Hard road to Geneva Mistrust runs deep between Yemen’s warring parties, with the Houts believing the government wants to take back power by force and Hadi officials saying that the Houthis are refusing to withdraw from main cities as required by a UN Security Council Resolution passed in March.
Despite overwhelming firepower and air support from countries in the Saudi coalition, Hadi has struggled to impose his authority on Aden and other regions.
The Islamic State group formally announced its presence in Yemen in November.
Saad, the governor who was killed, was a retired army general who returned to Yemen from exile in Britain after the Houthis were driven out of Aden. A Saudi-led coalition began launching airstrikes against the Houthis in March.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Yemen, an impoverished Arab country, has been gripped by one of the most active regional al-Qaida insurgencies in the Middle East and the affiliate of the Islamic State. It wants to establish governance in Yemen based on a strict interpretation of Sunni Islamic law. Armored vehicles funded by Gulf nations to try to stop Houthi rebels are now controlled by al Qaeda, according to a top Aden security official in the governor’s office.
Advertisement
The claim by IS introduces another unsafe factor into the equation, our correspondent says, because like the long established al-Qaeda franchise in Yemen, IS has gained strength from the violence and chaos of the past nine months of all-out conflict.
