ISIS video claims ‘we’ve arrived’ in Yemen

Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants recently released a video claiming that it has established an official presence in Yemen, vowing to kill members of the conflict-torn country’s Houthi militias.

Donning matching uniforms and bearing AKM-S assault rifles in a desert landscape, the militants purportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS and called their new group as “Soldiers of the Caliphate in Yemen,” the video showed.

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The nine-minute video was posted online on April 24, a day after the Green Brigade, ISIS’s affiliate in Yemen, claimed responsibility of an attack that killed five Houthis in Yarim in the central province of Ibb.

The attack in Ibb was the second deadly incident claimed by the ISIS in Yemen after 142 people were killed and another 350 injured in a series of suicide bombings at Shiite mosques in Sanaa on March 20.

ISIS and Al-Qaeda view Shiite Muslims as heretics.

“We have come to Yemen, with men hungry for your blood to avenge the Sunnis and take back the land they have occupied,” a militant said in reference to the Shiite Houthis, whose last attack on the Yemeni government was to seize the southern seaport city of Aden, where President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi had been staying after declaring it as the country’s temporary capital, before seeking refuge in Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis took over the capital Sanaa in January, which escalated the conflict between Hadi’s government and its loyalists, and Houthis and its allies.

The militant also urged other Sunni men in Yemen to join ISIS.

The U.S. intelligence company, Stratfor said the video, “which will likely have recruiting value for the new jihadist group, indicates that Wilayat Sanaa has a core of well-trained and apparently well-financed militants in the conflict-ridden country.”

Stratfor estimated that there were 18 alleged ISIS militants seen in the video.