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| The body of UAE martyr Khamis Rashid Al Abdouli being received at Al Bateen Airport in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday. |
Four more Emirati servicemen and 11 others were martyred on Tuesday in attacks targeting exiled Yemeni officials and Saudi-led troops in the port city of Aden, authorities said. A new Daesh affiliate claimed responsibility for the assault, which officials previously blamed on Yemen's Houthi rebels.
Yemeni Vice-President and Prime Minister Khaled Bahah and other officials were unhurt, officials said. President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi is believed to be in Saudi Arabia.
The UAE servicemen martyred were Warrant Officers Ahmed Khamis Malullah Al Hamadi and Yousof Salem Ali Al Kaabi, First Corporal Ali Khamis bin Ayed Al Ketbi and Sergeant Major Mohammed Khalfan Al Siyabi.
Also on Tuesday, a military ceremony was held at Al Bateen Airport in Abu Dhabi to receive the body of martyr Khamis Rashid Al Abdouli, who died in Germany on Sunday from injuries he sustained in an incident in Marib, Yemen, in September.
The soldier was receiving treatment at a hospital in Germany. Following the ceremony, an army helicopter airlifted the body to his family in the emirate of Fujairah.
Tuesday's attack on Al Qasr Hotel & Resort in Aden, a large compound that Yemeni officials use as a headquarters, happened early in the morning. A blast struck the front of the 239-room hotel along the Arabian Sea, west of the port city's downtown, sending thick black smoke rising over it for hours as sirens wailed.
Two other attacks followed on locations used by troops from the UAE, which has the most overt presence among coalition forces inside Yemen.
The official Saudi Press Agency blamed the Houthis for the attack, saying the rebels fired Russian-designed Katyusha rockets. Those rockets are part of the Yemeni military stockpile that the Houthis, as well as Al Qaeda's local branch in the country, have seized amid the war's chaos.
But by Tuesday afternoon, the new Daesh affiliate in Aden claimed the attacks in a message circulated by militant sympathisers online. It said a truck bomb driven by a militant named Abu Saad Al Adani first attacked the hotel, followed by a bomber named Abu Mohammed Al Sahli driving an explosive-laden Humvee.
It also said bomber Aws Al Adani attacked the "Central Operations Headquarters of the Saudi and Emirati forces" while Abu Hamza Al Sanaani attacked an Emirati military administrative headquarters.
Two of the suicide bombers were driving Yemeni military vehicles, a Yemeni military source said. Daesh distributed pictures on Twitter showing smiling men it said were the suicide bombers and the hotel at the moment it was hit by a big orange fireball.
Salem Al Yazidi, a Yemeni fighter with a local militia allied with Hadi, described chaotic scenes when he rushed to aid the victims of the blast at the hotel.
"There was a big hole in the ground and what looked like the limbs of the bomber around it," Yazidi said.
Earlier, the Wam news agency quoted unnamed "informed sources and witnesses" for the death toll of 15 people killed, blaming Yemen's Houthi rebels and their allies for the deaths.
The general command of the UAE's armed forces said the dead included four Emirati soldiers, though the Saudi Press Agency said the dead included three Emiratis and one Saudi. The discrepancy could not be immediately reconciled.
Wam said the dead also included local Yemeni fighters taking part in the coalition. The Saudi Press Agency said an investigation was underway into the attack.
Soon after the incidents, UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Anwar Mohammed Gargash said in a Twitter message the attack on the hotel was further proof that the Houthis were determined to destroy Yemen.
"The situation on the ground shows that they are waging a losing battle and that their role has been diminished to retreating on the ground and to try to inflict damage with mines, ambushes and rockets," he said in another message.
Houthi official Yahya Ali Al Qahoom distanced his group from the bombings. "The blows which the invaders have received in Aden signal the depth of the struggle going on among factions and the intelligence agencies of the aggressor countries," he said on his Twitter account. - Agencies
Source : Khaleej Times
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