The men were at staging area near two schools and a mosque when, witnesses say, a pickup truck suddenly sped through the gate as a food delivery arrived. The Yemeni president’s supporters have blamed former President Ali Abdullah Saleh of intentionally using Islamist groups like ISIS to target Hadi. “And an al-Qaida branch and a burgeoning ISIS affiliate have benefited from the violence”.
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Abu Sufiyan al-Adani is reported to have driven his vehicle into a group of new recruits at the camp in Aden killing at least 60 and leaving 29 more injured.
On Sunday, high-ranking pro-government officials confirmed to Xinhua that they are planning to recruit and train more than 5,000 young fighters from the government-controlled southern provinces to join the fighting with the Saudi Border Guard Forces against Houthi rebels.
Aden, the temporary base of Yemen’s Arab Gulf-backed government, has seen a wave of bombings and shootings targeting officials and security forces. It says rescue work was hindered by the fighter jets who continued to fly over the bomb site. “I didn’t want him to go”, she said, sobbing.
The government has the support of a Saudi-led coalition which has carried out airstrikes on Houthi positions since March 2015.
Security deteriorated further after the Houthis swept into Sanaa in September 2014 and pushed south, forcing Hadi’s government to flee into exile.
Monday’s attack came amid a fresh drive to end the war that has left 6,600 people dead, according to the United Nations, and displaced another 2.5 million Yemenis.
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Cross-border attacks from Yemen have intensified since the suspension in early August of UN-brokered peace talks between the rebels and the government. Shuaib Almosawa contributed reporting from Sanaa, Yemen. They additionally briefed al-Jaafari about their recent decision to form a political council with the party of Yemen’s former president. Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Muslim allies view the Houthis, who hail from a branch of Shiite Islam, as proxies for Iran.
