A suicide bomber killed at least 25 new recruits inside a police compound in the southern Yemeni city of Mukalla on Sunday in an attack claimed by the self-styled Islamic State terrorist group, medical and security sources said.
The victims were queuing up to register when the bomb, which wounded 25 others, went off, the sources said.It was the second deadly blast in four days to hit the city, a hub for Al-Qaeda before the militant group was pushed out last month in an offensive by Yemeni troops backed by a Saudi-led coalition, Reuters reported.
In a message on its online news agency Amaq, IS said Sunday's attacker was a "martyrdom-seeker" who had detonated his explosive belt. It said around 40 died in the attack. Mubarak al-Awthaban, the city's security director, who was at a nearby office when the suicide bomber struck the Fowa Camp in the southern part of Mukalla, survived, security sources said.
Before being forced out, Al-Qaeda militants took advantage of more than a year of war between the Houthis and supporters of the Saudi-backed fugitive president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to carve out a mini-state stretching across much of the southern coast, including Mukalla.
