(MENAFN- The Peninsula) An attack on Huthi rebel leaders in the Yemeni capital claimed by the Islamic State group killed at least 28 people, medics said, the latest deadly assault on Shiites by the Sunni extremists.
Yemen was previously the preserve of IS's jihadist 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 targeted Huthi rebel chief brothers Faycal and Hamid Jayache during a gathering to mourn the death of a family member, a security source said.
Eight women were among the dead.
Huthi rebels closed down the surrounding area in the centre of Sanaa after the attack, only allowing through emergency services to help evacuate the victims, witnesses said.
The explosion blew a crater in the road, took chunks out of nearby walls and left debris strewn across the street.
In a statement posted online, IS said it had organised the attack on what it called a "Shiite nest".
The jihadist group considers Shiites heretics and has repeatedly targeted them not only in Yemen but in countries across the region.
Just Friday, a Saudi IS suicide bomber killed 26 people and wounded 227 in a Shiite mosque in Kuwait.
In Yemen, IS claimed a car bombing that killed two people outside a Shiite mosque in Sanaa on June 20 and a series of attacks in the capital four days earlier that killed 31.
- Rival jihadists -
The jihadist group, which marked the first anniversary of the declaration of its "caliphate" in Iraq and Syria on Monday, began its Yemen campaign in March with a series of bombings of Shiite mosques that killed 142 people.
The deadly attacks have overshadowed the operations of IS's rival in Yemen, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
AQAP has taken advantage of the Huthi rebellion to consolidate its grip of the southeastern province of Hadramawt, overrunning its capital Mukalla in March.
And it is still regarded as the network's most dangerous branch by Washington, which has kept up a drone war against in Mukalla.
But analysts said that IS was 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, professor of Islamic studies at the University of Toulouse in France.
The Iran-backed Huthi rebels have seized vast swathes of the country since launching an offensive in July 2014, forcing President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia.
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