ISIL raid kills 60 in Aden base
Toll is likely to rise in suicide blast at recruitment centre
ADEN // At least 60 people were killed when a suicide bomber drove his pickup truck into an army recruiting centre in Aden yesterday.
ISIL announced that the attack was carried out “by a fighter from the Islamic State”.
A police source said the death toll was expected to rise because of severe injuries suffered by another 60 people at the base, which was normally a school. “The suicide bomber was driving a Hilux truck, which was laden with explosive devices, and entered the yard of Mohida School in Al Sanafer neighbourhood where applicants were gathering to register their names,” he said.
The sound of the early-morning explosion echoed across the city. Part of the school building collapsed.
Relatives of the dead gathered, weeping and in shock as paramedics took those injured from the scene.
“Bodies were scattered all over the place,” said Mohammed Osman, a neighbour who rushed to the scene. “It was a massacre.”
The police source said the suicide bomber, Abu Sofian, had made it through the school’s security gate by following another vehicle as it delivered breakfast to the recruits.
Authorities have been training thousands of soldiers in Aden over the past two months to help retake other southern provinces from the extremists.
Aden is the base of Yemen’s internationally recognised government, which has been battling Iran-backed Houthi rebels and extremists in the country for more than a year.
Al Qaeda and ISIL have taken advantage of the chaos to make gains in southern and south-eastern regions.
This month, Yemeni government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition entered the capital of Abyan province, Zinjibar.
On Saturday, Aden’s governor, Brig Aidarous Al Zabidi, said that Aden was almost free from the terrorist groups and that government forces were going to hunt them down in Abyan and Lahj provinces.
Brig Al Zabidi accused the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the Houthi rebels of supporting the extremist groups to create chaos in Aden. He said many Al Qaeda and ISIL militants were being held in Aden’s prisons.
This month, a suicide bomber drove his vehicle into a large group of army reinforcements sent from Aden to fight militants in Lahj, killing five soldiers.
On July 20, four policemen were killed in a bombing attack in Aden that was claimed by ISIL, and in May the group admitted to twin suicide bombings in Aden that killed at least 41 people.
A few days earlier, an attack in Mukalla against men applying to join the security forces killed more than 40. Mukalla was liberated from Al Qaeda in April by Yemeni troops backed by the Arab coalition, which includes the UAE.
The coalition has provided the troops with air cover throughout the war against the extremists. The US has also carried out drone strikes against Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen.
The coalition intervened in Yemen in March last year and has helped government forces to push the Houthi rebels out of Aden and four other southern provinces since July last year. The war in Yemen has also affected security in Saudi Arabia, where shelling on Sunday from the kingdom’s impoverished neighbour killed three Saudi children and wounded nine people.
Cross- border attacks from Yemen have intensified since the suspension in early August of UN-brokered peace talks between the rebels and the government in Kuwait.