ISIS has claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing that killed dozens of recruits at a military training camp Monday in Yemen’s southern port city of Aden, according to a statement by the ISIS-affiliated Amaq agency which was widely circulated on social media.
At least 45 people were killed in the attack and sixty others wounded, Doctors Without Borders (MSF) communications manager Malak Shaher told CNN.
The car bomb exploded inside a training camp for forces allied to Saudi-backed Yemeni President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, according to two senior security officials in Aden.
The explosion occurred at 8:15 a.m. local time (1.15 a.m. ET) while recruits were waiting in line to be enrolled among troops heading to battle at the Saudi-Yemeni border, the officials said.
Aden has been used as the de facto capital of Hadi’s Saudi-backed government. The actual capital, Sanaa, has been under the control of Houthi rebels since last year.
It is the latest bloody incident in the country’s unrelenting civil war.
This month alone, airstrikes carried out by the Saudi-led coalition on two schools killed 14 children. The coalition denied targeting Yemeni schools, instead insisting they targeted a militia training camp.
Another, on a hospital, also took 14 lives. The hospital attack prompted MSF to pull their staff from six hospitals in northern Yemen. The coalition said it regretted the aid group’s withdrawal from the country.