Car bomb kills 12 militants in south Yemen

A bomb-laden vehicle parked near an arms depot exploded killing 12 Iran-backed members of Houthi militia and wounding eight others in southern Yemen’s Abyan province on Saturday, a local official told AFP.

The official said the attack in the coastal city of Shoqra was carried out by local anti-militia fighters, who are backed by a Saudi-led coalition pounding Shiite Houthi militants and their allies since March 26.

Anti-Houthi forces are made up of pro-government fighters, Sunni tribes and southern separatists, collectively known as Popular Resistance Committees.

In the southern port city of Aden, coalition warplanes launched deadly airstrikes against Houthi-held positions, a military official said, without giving a toll.

Aden has been the scene of deadly clashes between the militias, who include troops loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Popular Resistance fighters.

A health official in the city told AFP that “nine people, among them four civilians, were killed and 132 people wounded during the past 48 hours.”

The casualties were caused by “random Houthi shelling of residential areas” using mortar rounds and Katyusha rockets, as well as ongoing clashes, the spokesman of the Popular Resistance leadership in Aden, Ali al-Ahmedi, told AFP.

According to the World Health Organization, the Yemen conflict has since March killed almost 2,000 people and wounded 8,000, with hundreds of women and children among the casualties.