Middle East News
Nine killed, 38 injured in Yemen mosque bombing (Roundup)
By DPA
May 2, 2008, 12:40 GMT

Sana'a, Yemen - Nine people were killed and 38 injured in a powerful explosion outside a mosque in the volatile north-western Yemeni province of Saada on Friday, a police official said.

Brigadier Muhammad al-Qahm, chief commander of police forces in Saada, said a booby-trapped motorcycle blew up outside the Bin Salman mosque shortly after the weekly prayers in the provincial city of Saada.

He told the official Saba news agency that a soldier, a child and a woman were among those killed.

The official said security forces arrested several suspects after the attack, and that they were being interrogated.

Earlier in the day, witnesses told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa the blast was believed to have been a car bomb.

'Dozens of injured people were seen lying outside the mosque, and several cars were burned by the blast,' a witness said in a telephone call from Saada, some 230 kilometres north of Sanaa.

He said ambulances were seen rushing injured worshippers to hospitals.

Local sources in Saada said a regional army commander was the target of the attack, but he survived unharmed.

They said Shiite rebels who have been fighting government forces in Saada for more than three years, are believed to have been behind the attack.

The attack comes one day after four army troops were killed and several others injured after Shiite rebels attacked an army personnel carrier in Saada.

The sources said the attack took place in Za'afa in the mountainous Haidan district, where armed members of the outlawed 'Believing Youth' Shiite group hold sway over strategic mountainous locations near the border with Saudi Arabia.

It was the second attack on army vehicles since the fighting renewed on April 25, one day after authorities said Qatari mediators had resumed efforts to follow up on the implementation of a Qatari- brokered ceasefire deal.

On Wednesday, seven soldiers were killed and 17 others wounded in a similar attack on a military convoy in the Dhahian city in northern Saada, the defence ministry said.

Tens of thousands of army troops have been deployed in Saada to crush the revolt that originally began after Shiite cleric Hussein al-Houthi, the elder brother of the current leader of the group Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, established the movement in March 2004. Hussein was killed by the army in September the same year.

Waves of violent clashes since mid-2004 have left hundreds of government troops and rebels dead, and displaced thousands of civilians in the volatile region.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has repeatedly accused the Houthis of trying to topple the republican regime and re-establish the rule of the Zaidi Imamate, a royal regime that was overthrown by a revolution in 1962.

Followers of al-Houthi belong mostly to the Zaidi sect of Islam, which is regarded as a moderate sect.