About five Yemenis were killed when an explosives-laden car blew up near Yemen's Finance Ministry headquarters in the southern port city of Aden early Wednesday, local officials said. According to the Aden-based officials, a group of militants detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device and targeted the Ministry of Finance building in KhorMaksar district of Aden.
Residents told Xinhua that the blast was so powerful that it sent a large plume of smoke up over the area, causing partial damage to nearby residential buildings. "Five people were killed and a number of other citizens are being treated in hospital. Some of them have light injuries due to shattered glass, most of them civilians," Col. Nasser Babad, director of the police station in KhorMaksar, told Xinhua.
Another security source said the blast occurred in the early hours when no government workers or employees were present at the ministry building and all the offices empty. However, the explosion badly damaged the building and engulfed it with flames for hours, leaving everything including important government documents on fire.
Security forces, backed by armored vehicles, cordoned off the area as firefighters and ambulances rushed to the scene. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. But the Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for two previous suicide attacks against security buildings in Aden in November, which killed more than 47.
According to observers, the suicide attacks and repeated drive-by shootings in Aden point to a spectacular intelligence failure and the fact that terrorists have managed to move and launch attacks despite the heavy presence of Yemeni troops backed by the United Arab Emirates.
The port city of Aden is considered Yemen's temporary capital, where the Saudi-backed government has based itself since 2015. During the past two years, the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and other terrorist groups including the IS had an active presence in southern Yemen.
The impoverished Arab country has been locked into a civil war since Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels overran much of the country militarily and seized all northern provinces including the capital Sanaa in 2014. Saudi Arabia has been leading an Arab military intervention coalition in Yemen since 2015 to support the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after Iran-backed Houthi rebels forced him into exile.
The United Nations has listed Yemen as the world's number one humanitarian crisis, where seven million Yemenis are on the brink of famine and cholera has caused more than 2,000 deaths.