A car bombing claimed by the Islamic State militant group killed four people near a Shia mosque in the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital Sana’a, the group said.
Children were among eight people wounded in the Monday evening blast, the local Saba news agency said, France24 reported.
IS insurgents have carried out a string of deadly attacks against Shia targets in Yemen since March.
The Houthi forces, who took control of Sana’a last September, reportedly lost 11 fighters in other attacks in the capital overnight, medics and witnesses said.
Six were killed in a shooting at a checkpoint near the central bank. Five were also killed in a car bombing against a police station in the Al-Hassaba district in the north of the city.
The attacks came as the Houthis faced a rare setback in the second city of Aden following a weeklong offensive by forces loyal to Yemen’s fugitive president Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi.
A Saudi-led coalition of Arab countries launched a military campaign in Yemen in late March to restore Hadi, exiled in Riyadh, and repel Houthis.
More than 3,200 people have been killed, including more than 1,000 civilians, in the three-month-long conflict.
UN Aid Ship in Aden
A ship carrying UN food aid to feed 180,000 people for a month docked at the Yemeni port of Aden Tuesday, having waited for almost four weeks, a World Food Program spokesman said.
Aden and other southern provinces of Yemen have been largely inaccessible to UN food aid, and around 13 million people, over half the population, are thought to be in a situation of “critical” or “emergency” food insecurity.
“It’s the first WFP chartered ship to berth in the port since the conflict erupted in late March,” spokesman Peter Smerdon said. “We have additional ships chartered which are on standby heading towards Aden carrying more food and fuel.”
