ADEN (Dispatches) – Two Yemenis were killed and four others injured in an explosion in the country’s southeastern oil-rich province of Shabwa on Saturday, a military official told Xinhua.
A local military officer told Xinhua on condition of anonymity that an improvised explosive device (IED) on the roadside exploded when a motorcade of military vehicles that escorted trucks carrying diesel passed by in the Ar Rawdah district of Shabwa.
The IED, which was planted and remotely detonated, also destroyed a military vehicle, the source said.
Security forces and a medical team were sent to the site and carried the wounded soldiers to a nearby hospital for treatment, he noted.
So far, no group has claimed the responsibility for the attack.
The Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula network has exploited years of deadly Saudi-led conflict to expand its presence in the war-ravaged country. It frequently uses hit-and-run tactics while hiding out in rocky terrains and mountainous areas of Abyan and other neighboring provinces including Shabwa.
Saudi Arabia, in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistics support from the U.S. and other Western states, launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015.
The objective was to crush the popular Ansarullah resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen, and reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.
While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to achieve any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.