A Yemeni soldier packing powerful explosives under his uniform blew himself up in the middle of an army battalion in Sanaa on Monday, killing 96 troops and wounding around 300, a military official and medics said.
The suicide attack was the deadliest in the country’s capital since newly-elected President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi pledged to oust al Qaeda militants from Yemen’s mostly lawless and restive southern and eastern provinces. Yemeni police officer Colonel Abdul Hamid Bajjash, in charge of security at the blast area, said the attack “bears the hallmark of al Qaeda”. According to Reuters, a group Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law), which is affiliated to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), claimed the responsibility for the suicide attack, saying it was in response to the “crimes” of the security forces, who are fighting to dislodge militants from their strongholds in Abyan.
