Blast adds urgency to Yemen peace talks

Aden: A car bomb claimed by Daesh Sunday killed the governor of Yemen’s second city Aden, adding urgency to reach a peace deal a day after a visit by the UN’s envoy to discuss long-delayed peace talks.

A statement posted on Twitter by the terrorist group said it was behind a blast that hit the convoy of Jaafar Sa’ad in the Tawahi neighbourhood of the major port city, killing him and eight of his bodyguards.

In a statement carried by the official Saba news agency, the head of security in Aden General Mohammad Mussad confirmed Sa’ad’s death and said six of his guards were also killed.

Images circulated on social media after the attack showed a wrecked car on fire on a main road in the city.

Sa’ad was only recently appointed governor and was known to be close to President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who returned to Aden last month after several months in exile in Riyadh.

Yemeni resistance forces, aided by a Saudi-led coalition, have battled Iran-backed Al Houthi militants in Yemen since March, after they overran the capital Sana’a and advanced south, forcing the government to flee to Saudi Arabia.

Fighting between Al Houthi militants and Yemeni forces has plunged the impoverished nation into chaos, which terrorist groups have exploited to make sweeping gains, particularly in southern regions.

Tawahi itself has become a known hideout for Al Qaida militants.

Daesh has claimed a string of attacks in Yemen, including the bombing of Hadi’s government headquarters in October and multiple suicide attacks on mosques in Sana’a attended by Shiite worshippers that killed scores.

Sa’ad’s death comes a day after Yemen’s UN envoy held talks with Hadi in Aden aimed at kickstarting peace talks between the warring sides.

Esmail Ould Shaikh Ahmad met Hadi to seek his agreement to convene negotiations with the rebels in Geneva next week, an official close to the president told AFP.

But the mission was “difficult”, said the source, accusing Al Houthis of dragging their feet on implementing UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which calls for them to withdraw from occupied territory.

And Foreign Minister Abdul Malak Al Mekhlafi told AFP: “The putschists are refusing to lay down their arms or to allow the government to carry out its duties” from Sana’a.

“They have not announced their list of negotiators” for the talks “and are trying to escalate the situation on the ground by bombing residential districts of Taiz”, a strategic city in southwest Yemen under siege by the rebels and their allies, he said.

In a protest sent to the United Nations, Yemen’s minister in charge of human rights, Ezz Al Deen Al Isbahi, condemned the “massacres and atrocities” allegedly committed in Taiz by the militants that he said had killed 33 civilians last week, including four children.

The United Nations says that more than 5,700 people have been killed in Yemen, almost half of them civilians since hostilities began.

In Aden on Saturday gunmen shot dead the presiding judge of a terrorism court, Mohsen Mohammad Alwan, and four of his bodyguards, a security source said, and police Colonel Al Khodhr Ali Ahmad was gunned down in a separate attack.