Yemen car bomb attack ‘kills 15’

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A car bombing of a Shia religious procession has killed 15 people in the northern Yemen, reports say.

A spokesman for the area’s Huthi rebels said his group was targeted in the attack, in al-Jawf province.

It is not clear who carried out the attack, which took place during al-Shadeer, a festival not recognised by Yemen’s majority Sunni Muslims.

Yemen’s weak central government faces rebels in the north and south as well as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

A rebel spokesman told AFP news agency that 30 people were also wounded in the suspected suicide bombing.

There has been speculation that al-Qaeda or another Sunni Muslim group may have carried out the attack, says the BBC’s Middle East correspondent Jon Leyne.

But the situation in Yemen, and northern Yemen in particular, is troubled and complicated, he says.

Disputes between the rebels and the government, and between different tribes, are as important as the religious divide between Shia and Sunni Muslims, our correspondent adds.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

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