Aden // At least six people were killed and 20 others injured in a bombing at the funeral of a senior military officer in Yemen’s Marib province on Friday.
The blast struck a tent where mourners were gathered to pay condolences over the death of Brigadier Abdurab Al Shadadi, the commander of the third military region who was killed while fighting Houthi rebels in Marib’s Sirwah district on October 7.
Among the dead was Al Shadadi’s older brother Salem. The casualty figures were released immediately after the blast by the government’s Saba news agency.
The bombing came a week after an air raid blamed on Saudi-led coalition warplanes killed about 140 people at a funeral in Sanaa attended by some of Yemen’s top political and security officials.
Following that attack on October 8, former president and rebel ally Ali Abdullah Saleh called on supporters to take revenge on Saudi Arabia and its allies.
Yemen’s war has intensified since UN-sponsored peace talks in Kuwait ended in August without an agreement. Fighting has been concentrated around the capital Sanaa, which was seized by the Iran-backed Houthis in 2014.
Most of Marib is under the control of forces loyal to president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi, whose internationally recognised government is backed by the Saudi-led coalition.
Saudi Arabia’s interior ministry said on Friday that a soldier was killed in the Jazan region bordering Yemen after coming under fire from the rebels on Thursday night.
At least 110 Saudi soldiers and civilians have been killed along the border, either in rebel rocket fire or armed clashes, since March last year when the coalition began an air war against the rebels. The United Nations puts the total death toll in the conflict since then at more than 6,700, most of them civilians.
Britain on Friday said it planned to put forward a draft United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate truce in Yemen and a resumption of peace talks.
The 15-member body this week failed to agree on a statement condemning the October 8 air raid in Sanaa. Russia dismissed the statement as too vague and diplomats said Moscow refused to engage any further on it. Council statements must be agreed by consensus.
“Sadly the Yemen statement is dead,” Britain’s UN ambassador Matthew Rycroft said.
“We have decided instead to put forward a draft Security Council resolution on Yemen calling for an immediate cessation of hostilities and a resumption of the political process,” he said.
“We will be circulating that to council colleagues in the coming days.”
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
* With reporting from Reuters and Agence France-Presse
