Four more Emirati servicemen and 11 others were martyred on Tuesday in attacks targeting exiled Yemeni officials and Saudi-led troops in the Yemeni port city of Aden, authorities said. A new Daesh affiliate claimed responsibility for the assault, which officials previously blamed on Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Yemeni Vice-President and Prime Minister Khaled Bahah and other officials were unhurt, officials said. President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi is believed to be in Saudi Arabia.
The UAE servicemen martyred were Warrant Officers Ahmed Khamis Malullah Al Hamadi and Yousof Salem Ali Al Kaabi, First Corporal Ali Khamis bin Ayed Al Ketbi and Sergeant Major Mohammed Khalfan Al Siyabi.
Tuesday’s attack on Al Qasr Hotel & Resort in Aden, a large compound that Yemeni officials use as a headquarters, happened early in the morning. A blast struck the front of the 239-room hotel along the Arabian Sea, west of the port city’s downtown, sending thick black smoke rising over it for hours as sirens wailed.
Two other attacks followed on locations used by troops from the UAE, which has the most overt presence among coalition forces inside Yemen.
The official Saudi Press Agency blamed the Houthis for the attack, saying the rebels fired Russian-designed Katyusha rockets. Those rockets are part of the Yemeni military stockpile that the Houthis, as well as Al Qaeda’s local branch in the country, have seized amid the war’s chaos.
Meanwhile a Yemeni affiliate of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group has claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack on an Arab coalition base that killed at least 15 troops.
The group made the claim through its affiliated accounts on Twitter on Tuesday, posting a series of photos depicting the bombings and pictures of the suicide attackers involved.
Living conditions continue to deteriorate for ordinary Yemenis
“Four martyrdom operations targeted a gathering of Saudi, Emirati, and Yemeni offices,” a statement released by the group said.
The names of the attackers in the pictures suggested those involved were all Yemeni in origin.
Al Jazeera’s Correspondent says the claim of responsibility by ISIL marked the start of “strange scenario” in Yemen.
“On the one hand we have government forces and the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis, and now you have ISIL fighting the government and Houthi forces,” he said.