Aden: A suicide bomber drove a car laden with explosives into a police compound in southern Yemen’s main city on Tuesday, blowing himself up and wounding four police, security sources said.
Police averted another suicide bombing in the same area of Aden, and they arrested two people who admitted links to Al Qaida, a security source said.
A second explosion struck a police training camp in another part of the city, causing no casualties, the sources said. Local officials said the suicide bombing had killed two police.
Hundreds of police, soldiers and other security officials have been killed in explosions and shootings over the past two years in southern Yemen, where the government and allied tribal militias are fighting against Islamist militants allied to Al Qaida.
Security in Yemen is of a concern for the US and Gulf Arab countries given its location next to the biggest oil exporter Saudi Arabia and big crude shipping routes through the Red Sea.
This month Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen’s branch of the movement, said it was behind an assault on a Defence Ministry complex in the capital Sana’a in which more than 50 people were killed.
The main Islamist militant group, Ansar Al Sharia, took advantage of political chaos during protests in 2011 inspired by the Arab Spring to seize control of several cities in southern areas. The group was repulsed by government forces backed by US drones the following year.
But the insurgents have since regrouped and mounted attacks on government officials and installations. Yemen also faces deep-rooted poverty, a southern separatist movement, divisions within the army and fighting between Salafi Sunni Muslims and members of the Houthi movement, representing Zaydi Shiites, in the country’s north.
