25 killed in Yemen bombing claimed by IS, medics say

ADEN, Yemen — A suicide bomber killed at least 25 Yemeni police recruits in the southeastern port city of Mukalla on Sunday, medics said, the second attack this week claimed by the Islamic State group.

The bomber detonated an explosives belt as he joined a line of men at a police recruitment center on the southwestern outskirts of the city that government forces recaptured last month after a year of al-Qaeda rule, a provincial official said.

Sixty people were also wounded in the attack in Fuwah district, a medical source said.

An IS statement posted online claimed the attack, the second but rare intervention by the jihadist group in an area known as a stronghold of rival al-Qaeda.

“Brother Abu al-Bara al-Ansari… detonated his explosives belt at a gathering of the apostates of the security forces,” it said.

On Thursday, 15 Yemeni troops were killed in jihadist attacks on army positions outside Mukalla. IS said one of its militants blew up a vehicle packed with explosives in an army base in Khalf district on the city’s eastern outskirts.

Last Friday a top officer said Yemeni government forces captured around 250 “al-Qaeda members” since they retook Mukalla, the largest city in the country’s southeast.

“We have arrested around 250 members of al-Qaeda, including some leaders, since our operations began,” General Faraj Salmin told AFP.

Salmin commands the second military zone which includes Mukalla, capital of the vast desert province of Hadramawt.

The port city was retaken from the jihadists on April 24.

“One of these chiefs, Mohammed Saleh al-Orabi who calls himself the emir of Shar, was detained on Thursday” in the area of the same name some 60 kilometers (35 miles) east of Mukalla, he added.

All of the arrests were made in Mukalla and its surroundings, the general said.

Al-Qaeda occupied the city for a year, and imposed strict Islamic law on residents.

Special forces from the UAE, a member of a Saudi-led coalition battling Shiite Huthi rebels across Yemen, played a major role in retaking Mukalla.

The United States said that “a very small number” of American soldiers were also involved in the operation.