Yemen: UAE-backed official killed in Houthi strike 

A UAE-backed commander was amongst those killed when an explosion struck a military parade in Yemen’s southern city of Aden today.

Scores were injured and killed in the blast which rocked the seat of Yemen’s Saudi-backed internationally recognised government.

The Houthi movement said it was behind the attack. Their official channel Al Masirah TV said it had launched a medium-range ballistic missile and an armed drone at the military parade.

“The blast occurred behind the stand where the ceremony was taking place at Al Jalaa military camp in Buraiqa district in Aden,” Reuters reported a witness saying.

Soldiers screamed and ran to lift the wounded and place them on trucks. Red berets lay on the ground in pools of blood as several soldiers cried near the body of a commander who was a leading figure among southern separatists.

Yemen’s Prime Minister Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed and Saudi Arabia’s envoy to Yemen accused Iran of being behind the parade attack and a separate blast at a police station, also in the southern port city today, involving an explosives-laden car.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are part of an Arab coalition fighting in Yemen against the Iran-backed Houthis and forces loyal to ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The coalition entered the war in 2015 to reinstate the UN-backed President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. However the UAE has been found to be backing the Southern Transitional Council in an effort to split Yemen in to two countries, North and South, contrary to the objectives of the coalition.

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