Aden // At least 40 people were killed on Sunday when a suicide bomber attacked a queue of men waiting to join the Yemeni security forces in a city recently liberated from Al Qaeda.
ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack in Mukalla, which also injured 50 people.
Hours later, a bomb exploded at the gate of the office in Mukalla of the provincial police chief, killing six of his guards. Brigadier general Mubarak Al Obthani, head of security for Hadramout Province, was lightly wounded in the attack.
The day of bloodshed came after Yemeni troops backed by Arab coalition forces, including from the UAE, seized the city from Al Qaeda militants last month.
The port with a population of 200,000 was used as a base by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula for a year as the extremists took advantage of a civil war to expand their territory.
The first attack took place outside a police station in the city’s Fowah district. The attacker positioned himself in the middle of the line of applicants waiting to sign up and set off his explosive belt, a security source in Mukalla told The National.
Hospitals in the city appealed to residents to donate blood to help treat the scores of injured.
Mohammed Al Sharafi, a journalist based in Mukalla said medics expected the number of deaths to increase due to the severity of the injuries. “Some of the inured people need to travel abroad for treatment, as they need urgent operations,” Al Sharafi added.
Gen Al Obthani was at the recruitment centre at the time of the attack but was not hurt. However, he was the target of the second bombing after returning to his office. The bomb exploded as Gen Al Obthani walked out of the building, a security official told AFP.
An ISIL statement claimed the first suicide bombing, a rare attack by the extremists in an area known to be a stronghold of its Al Qaeda rivals.
Mukalla’s residents had been celebrating the defeat of Al Qaeda in the city but the mood has been tempered by a number of attacks in recent days.
On Thursday, 15 soldiers were killed in a bombing outside Mukalla. ISIL said one of its militants blew up a vehicle packed with explosives in an naval base in Khalaf district.
The offensive against Al Qaeda comes amid a truce and peace talks between the government and Iran-backed Houthi rebels it has been fighting with support from a Saudi-led coalition since March last year.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
* With additional reporting from Agence France-Presse