Al Mukalla: A suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest on Sunday blew himself up outside the house of a security commander, killing at least 45 soldiers and injuring 60 others who had gathered there to receive their salaries in Yemen’s port city of Aden, witnesses and security official said.
The attack comes eight days after another suicide bomber targeted a gathering of security forces, killing 50 outside the nearby Al Solban military camp.
An intelligence officer told Gulf News that the suicide bomber slipped into the soldiers’ regiment standing outside the house of Brigadier General Nasser al Anbouri, the commander of Special Security Forces, and detonated his explosives as they were due to enter the heavily fortified house.
“All of the targeted soldiers are from the general security, police and special security forces,” the officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to brief the media.
Thousands of security and army soldiers lined up at their camps or police stations to receive their three-month salaries.
In the wake of the December 10 deadly attack, local military and political observers warned that more attacks of this nature could be expected.
“What we warned of yesterday has come true today,” Yasser Al Yafae, a journalist from Aden and the editor of Yafae News, told Gulf News shortly after the deadly blast.
“The security services should have divided them into small groups and stepped up security around them.”
In August, Daesh claimed responsibility for a suicide attack that killed at least 50 young military recruits outside a camp 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 Hadhramaut province.
Apart from these deadly suicide attacks, security has improved in Aden after the army deployed thousands of security forces who were trained inside military camps run by the Saudi-led Arab coalition.
Daesh and Al Qaida have suffered fatal blows in the last several months as the army has driven them out of their major strongholds in South Yemen.
Both militant groups used to have control over some districts in the port city of Aden where they carried out assassinations of security officers in broad daylight.
Aden is currently the base of the internationally-recognised president and his government.
Meanwhile, in northern Yemen, warplanes from the Saudi-led coalition struck military camps in Al Houthi-held Sana’a.
Intensive air bombardment by the coalition has managed to turn the tide of this war in favour of forces loyal to president Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi and enabled them to liberate several provinces.