Four UAE soldiers among 22 killed in Yemen attacks

10/6/2015 11:13:43 PM

(MENAFN- The Peninsula)A picture taken from distance on October 6 2015 shows smoke billowing from Al Qasr hotel in Aden's western suburbs. AFP Photo

ADEN: Islamic State suicide bombers killed 22 people in attacks on Yemen’s government and its Gulf Arab coalition ally in the port city of Aden and on a Houthi-run mosque in the capital Sanaa yesterday the jihadist group and state media said.

It was the first known direct Islamic State assault on the Yemeni government and the Saudi-led coalition that intervened in the country’s civil war in March against Houthi forces who had seized large areas of the country to that point.

Four coordinated IS suicide bombings killed 11 Yemeni and four UAE soldiers in Aden Yemeni officials and the UAE state news agency said.

In Sanaa seven people were killed in the attack on the Al Nour mosque in the Al Nahda district of the Houthi-controlled capital the Houthi-run state news agency said.

Claiming responsibility for the Sanaa bombing IS said in a statement that dozens of Houthis preparing to go to the battlefront had been killed or wounded.

The Yemeni government returned from exile in Saudi Arabia and set up temporary headquarters in Aden’s Al Qasr hotel last month after Gulf Arab and Yemeni troops retook the major southern port city from Houthi forces.

Vice-President Khaled Bahah who is also prime minister and cabinet colleagues escaped unharmed from what he said were car bomb attacks in Aden two of which targeted the Al Qasr hotel. “Today’s attack does not affect anybody. On the contrary it binds us together more” he told a cabinet meeting afterwards in comments carried by Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.

“We had come here to work and we know that there are security gaps... But this now prompts us to do more in the framework of reinforcing security in a bigger way by the general security services and armed forces.”

The United Arab Emirates state news agency WAM said suicide bombers also targeted two Gulf Arab military sites in Aden.

Rajeh Badi spokesman for the Yemeni government said it would remain in Aden to carry on its duties for the time being.Reuters

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