The suicide bomber's target was a group of soldiers gathered outside an army base. It is the second such attack on the same base in under a week.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/S. Al-Obeidi
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At least 48 soldiers were killed in Yemen on Sunday after a suicide bomber blew himself up in the country's second-largest city of Aden, officials said, revising earlier death tolls upwards. Dozens more were injured at the gathering near Solban army base in northeastern Aden, they said.
The base was already targeted by a suicide bomber just last week in an attack that killed 48 soldiers and wounded 29. That attack was claimed by a Yemeni affiliate of the "Islamic State" (IS) extremist group.
Image: DW
IS later said it was responsible for Sunday's bombing as well. Both IS and al Qaeda are active in the country. Al Qaeda, however, distanced itself from the December 10 bombing - claiming that it targets "Americans and their allies," while eschewing "the shedding of any Muslim blood."
The city has also been in the foreground of Yemen's civil conflict, which has seen rebel Houthis, allied with Iran, fighting forces loyal to President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi since 2014. Hadi, the country's internationally recognized leader, was forced to flee to neighboring Saudi Arabia. Riyadh has since launched an air campaign to root out rebel strongholds.
Aden is now run by a lose coalition of militias, jihadists and troops loyal to Hadi. It is the provisional center of government as Hadi's forces and their Saudi allies are still fighting to retake the capital, Sanaa. Around 7,000 people, nearly half of them civilians, have lost their lives in Yemen's civil war, which critics have said is a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran as the regional rivals vie for influence.
es/tj (AFP, dpa)
Yemen: Girl recovers from malnutrition
In war-torn Yemen, 18-year-old Saida suffered from malnutrition for years. These photos document her slow recovery.
Image: Reuters/K. Abdullah
Alarming evidence of misery in Yemen
This image of 18-year-old Saida Ahmad Baghili, sitting on her bed at Al-Thawra in the Red Sea Port city of Hodeida shows her malnourished, emaciated body. It has come to stand for the worsening humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
Image: Reuters/A. Zeyad
Saida smiles - after weeks of treatment
Saida was transferred to a hospital in the capital, Sanaa. After weeks of hospital care, she can at least smile, though she can still barely speak and continues to find eating difficult at times. Her father is still worried: "She doesn't eat anything except liquid medical food. She used to drink juice and milk with bananas but now she can't. We don't know when she'll recover."
Image: Reuters/A. Zeyad
A lifelong condition
Doctors believe her condition has damaged her throat. When her family first brought Saida to a hospital, she could barely keep her eyes open or stand. "We admitted Saida to find out the cause of her inability to eat," her doctor said. "Her health issue remains chronic and her bones remain fragile due to stunted growth. In all likelihood, they will never return to normal."
Image: Reuters/A. Zeyad
Finally gaining weight
Her father, Ahmed, who is staying nearby to be with his daughter, said his daughter's weight has reached 16 kilograms (35 pounds), five kilos more than when she was first admitted to hospital. He said Saida's situation was alarming before the war, which began in March 2015. Yemen's crisis including widespread hunger was brought on by decades of poverty and internal strife.
Image: Reuters/K. Abdullah
Food insecurity
About half of Yemen's 28 million people are "food insecure," according to the United Nations, and 7 million of them do not now where they will get their next meal. The US-based Famine Early Warning Systems Network, run by the US Agency for International Development, estimated that a quarter of all Yemenis are probably in a food security "emergency" - one stage before "catastrophe" or famine.
Image: Reuters/K. Abdullah
Saida out of the hospital
The war has pushed the Arab world's poorest nation to the brink of famine and displaced over three million people. Areas worst affected by the conflict are parts of Taiz province and southern coastal areas of the Hodeida province, where Saida is from.
Image: Reuters/K. Abdullah
One reason for undersupply
Restrictions imposed on the entry of ships after the start of the war in Yemen had raised insurance premiums and cut the number of vessels entering the port by more than half. About a million tons of food supplies entered through Hodeida in 2015, a third as much as in 2014.
Image: Reuters/F. Al Nassar
Yemeni women call attention to disaster
Yemeni women are holding banners depicting suffering, malnourished children. They protest against a UN roadmap for the Yemen conflict, which is calling for naming a new vice president after the withdrawal of the Houthi rebels from Sanaa. Since the beginning of the war, at least 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen.
