Al Mukalla: Yemen’s president has ordered setting up a committee to investigate a deadly attack in the port city of Aden that killed dozens of young recruits on Saturday, the state-run Saba news agency reported.
Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi asked his government on Saturday to form a committee of senior security officials to investigate security lapses that led to the attack and pay a million Yemeni riyals (Dh14,685) to the families of the perished men and another half million to the injured.
On Saturday afternoon, a Daesh-linked man wearing explosive belt sneaked into a gathering of young recruits queuing up outside a military camp in Aden’s Khour Maksar district and blew himself up as they were about to get their official registration numbers.
Abdul Nasser Al Wali, the head of the provincial office of the ministry of health, told Gulf News on Sunday that the death toll soared from 30 in the early hours of the explosion to 48 as many critically injured people died in local hospitals’ emergency rooms.
“There are six critically-injured people at intensive care units in Aden. They were civilians who went to the camp to join the army.” Al Wali said.
In the statement, Hadi vowed to uproot “criminal elements and their supporters” from Aden and other liberated provinces and instructed the security apparatus to be on a high alert to thwart any possible attack.
Al Qaida, Daesh and other armed groups have exploited security vacuum in the south during the fighting against Al Houthis last year to take control of a large swathe of land, including some districts in Aden. Local security forces and army troops, trained and armed by the Saudi-led coalition, stormed took control of the militant’s stronghold after liberation and dismantled several sleeper cells responsible for the killing of dozens of intelligence officers and deadly attack on military facilities.
In August, Daesh claimed responsibility for a suicide attack that killed at least 50 young military recruits outside a military side in Aden.
In May, another Daesh-linked suicide bomber detonated his explosives inside a gathering of army recruits and security soldiers who were returning to their work in the city of Al Mukalla, the capital of Hadramout province.
Local security officers and journalists who spoke to the Gulf News after the deadly attack on Saturday warned that Daesh and Al Qaida could carry similar suicide attacks against gatherings of security soldiers who are due to show up at military camps or outside post offices to receive their salaries for the last three months.
