Islamic State in Yemen said it carried out a suicide bombing that killed ten soldiers in the provincial capital Mukalla on Thursday, hours before the prime minister was due to visit the city, which until two weeks ago was a militant stronghold.
Prime Minister Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr
is on his first visit to Mukalla, a port city on the Arabian Sea, since
it was recaptured by government soldiers in April after a year-long
occupation by Al Qaeda.
Islamic State said in an online statement that one of its members had blown himself up in a car near government troops.
Medical
sources said ten soldiers had been killed at a naval camp near the port
of Khalaf in Mukalla when a car exploded. About 15 soldiers were
wounded, they said.
"The explosion is not going to affect the visit or its aims," a government source told Reuters.
Mukalla,
the capital of the vast eastern province of Hadramout and important
shipping hub, had been the centre of a rich mini-state that Al Qaeda in
the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) built up over the past year as it took
control of an almost 600-km (370-mile) band of Arabian Sea coastline.
In late April, Yemeni and Emirati soldiers seized Mukalla from al Qaeda, which withdrew its men among little fighting.
Islamic
State in Yemen has criticised AQAP for losing Mukalla to the
Gulf-backed Yemeni forces, and said the long-established group had
suffered its territorial losses because it had chosen to be populist
rather than following the commands of God.
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