A top commander injured in assassination attempt in Yemen

SANAA, Yemen – A top Yemeni commander escaped an assassination attempt by a suicide car bomber in southern Yemen on Wednesday, in an attack that also killed three people and injured others, a military statement and security officials said.

The officials say that the bomber targeted Maj. Gen. Abdel-Rahman al-Halili, the commander of the First Army District in the province of Hadramawt. He was heading to a camp located between the towns of Qatn and Sayoum. They said that he was injured in the head by shrapnel.

A statement issued by the First Army District said that three people were killed, including two civilians and one soldier. It added that 12 of al-Halili’s guards were wounded. The security officials put the death toll to seven. It was not immediately possible to clarify the discrepancy in the figures. The statement made no mention to the commander’s injury.

Al-Halili also visited the wounded in Sayoun hospital where he hinted that al-Qaida was behind the attack, saying that the “cowardly ones are back to their cowardly actions by setting up checkpoints and fighting from behind sand bags after their camp was destroyed days ago.”

Al-Halili was referring to a recent campaign in the Wadi Sirte area, where al-Qaida training camps were hit by airstrikes.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack but al-Hilali has been targeted by al-Qaida previously in failed assassination attempts.

The provincial capital of Hadramawt, Mukalla, fell into hands of al-Qaida last year but the Saudi-led coalition supporting the internationally-recognized government recently forced the group out.

In the southern city of Aden, Yemen’s second largest city and its economic hub, officials said that security guards foiled a suicide bomber targeting the Aden International Airport, which had only reopened last week after months of closure due to violence. The officials said security forces stopped the bomber before he could detonate his vest at the airport, and then raided his house where they found large amounts of explosives.

The security officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

The battles with al-Qaida are one of the many faces of the Yemeni conflict.

Over the past year, Shiite Houthi rebels and allied forces loyal to a former president have been fighting local forces backed by the Saudi-led coalition which is supporting the internationally recognized government of President Abed-Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

The two warring parties have been engaging in United Nations-brokered talks in Kuwait, which started on April 18, but have been disrupted by near-daily breaches to a fragile truce that was declared by the U.N. on April 10.

On Wednesday, the two sides agreed in principle to explore a proposal to release 50 per cent of all detainees held by each side ahead of the holy month of Ramadan, which starts in early June. The proposed prisoner release would be “a measure of good will and confidence-building between the parties,” according to a statement by Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for the UN Secretary-General.

The talks are aimed at ending the destructive conflict in Yemen which has killed nearly 9,000 people — a third of them civilians. A report by the Norwegian Refugee Council said on Wednesday that Yemen alone accounted for one quarter of conflict-related displacement worldwide last year, with 2.2 million people uprooted, or 20 times more than 2014.