A car laden with explosives blew up near the headquarters of Yemen’s central bank in the southern city of Aden today and five people were injured, local security sources said.
Security guards fired at the car as it moved at high speed towards the bank’s building and it then blew up, they said.
The blast caused minor damage to the building in a central district of Aden known as Crater and two cars nearby, one belonging to security guards and the other to a private citizen, caught fire and burned.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, though some reports have speculated that it may be the Iran-backed Houthi rebels who are angry that the Yemeni authorities stripped control of the central bank from them.
It was believed to be the first attempt to target the central bank since President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi’s decision in September to appoint a new governor and move its headquarters from the capital Sana’a, controlled by Houthi rebels, to the southern port city of Aden, where his government is based.
Hadi is backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition that has been trying to roll back gains made by the Iran-aligned Houthis since 2014 and restore the president to power. More than 10,000 people have died since the war began.