A car bomb claimed by Islamic
State exploded in the Yemeni capital Sanaa overnight, medics
said, wounding at least 28 people gathered to mourn another
attack earlier this month.
In a new sign that three months of war in Yemen was
ratcheting up, the country's military spokesman said its forces
had launched a Scud missile at a Saudi military base on Tuesday.
A Saudi-led military alliance has been bombing Yemen's
dominant Houthi group and its allies in the army to dislodge
them from the capital and restore the exiled president.
A sectarian-tinged conflict has raged throughout Yemen's
south and center, pitting the Shi'ite Muslim Houthis against
mostly Sunni local militiamen who support the Arab intervention.
The political vacuum has given hardline Sunni militants
greater room to operate. They regard the Houthis as apostates
worthy of death, and the overnight blast was the latest in a
series of attacks on the group and their supporters.
"The explosion was caused by a car bomb which exploded
behind the military hospital in the Sha'oub district in Sanaa,
which injured 28 people including 12 women in a building where
victims of a previous attack were being mourned," a medical
source said.
In a statement posted online, Islamic State claimed
responsibility for the blast, saying it had targeted the area
"out of revenge for the Muslims against the Houthi apostates."
Despite the months of Arab air strikes backing up the
Houthis' armed opponents in Yemen, the Houthis have not lost
ground on the battlefield and have stepped up their exchanges of
artillery and rocket fire with Saudi forces along their border.
Yemeni forces launched a Scud missile at a missile base in
Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Yemeni state news agency Saba quoted
the military's spokesman as saying.
"The rocket units in our heroic armed forces today launched
a Scud missile at the Al Sulayyil missile base in Riyadh
province ... it comes as a response to the crimes of the brutal
Saudi aggression," Brigadier General Sharaf Luqman said.
Luqman said the attack hit the base, which is about 450 km
(280 miles) south of the Saudi capital Riyadh, but a previous
Scud launched by Yemen's forces earlier this month was shot down
by Saudi patriot missiles despite Yemeni claims it struck its
target.
REUTERS