A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday.
“The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba.
A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in the north of Aden exploded as Shukri’s convoy passed by.
Photo: EPA
Shukri survived the attack, although a medical source told reporters that he had sustained shrapnel wounds in his leg.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blast, which came after clashes in the south between rival factions of Yemen’s government.
The Saudi Arabia-led military coalition in Yemen condemned the convoy attack and, in a statement posted on X, affirmed its support for “Yemeni security efforts to pursue those involved in this criminal act.”
The US embassy in Yemen also condemned the “unprovoked attack.”
Yemen’s internationally recognized government is a patchwork of groups held together by their opposition to the Iran-backed Houthis, who ousted them from the capital, Sana’a, in 2014 and now rule much of the country’s north.
The Houthis have been at war with the government, backed by a Saudi Arabia-led coalition since 2015, in a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and triggered a major humanitarian crisis.
Fissures in the government-run south came to a head when United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed separatists took over two provinces last month, triggering airstrikes by Saudi Arabian warplanes and a counteroffensive by pro-Saudi Arabia militias.
Pro-Saudi Arabia forces have since taken control of all of southern Yemen after the UAE withdrew its forces.
The government and its presidential body have since undergone a purge.
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
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