A branch of al-Qaeda militant group in Yemen has claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack on the residence of the Iranian ambassador to the Arab country in the capital city of Sana’a.
The militants “managed this morning to park a car loaded with explosives near the house of the Iranian ambassador and detonated it at 9:02 a.m. (local time)," the al-Qaeda branch said in a statement published on its Twitter account on Wednesday.
The blast killed at least three people, wounded several others, and heavily damaged a number of buildings.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said no diplomats were harmed in Wednesday’s bombing.
The al-Qaeda terrorist group, which has grown more hostile toward Shia Muslims in Yemen, claims that the Islamic Republic backs Shia Muslims there.
Al-Qaeda militants frequently carry out bomb attacks in Yemen and have been locked in deadly battles with Ansarullah fighters.
Al-Qaeda-linked violence against Yemeni security forces has been also growing since February 2012, when President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi came to power in a one-man election backed by Saudi Arabia and the United States.
Yemen’s central government has so far failed to confront the terrorist threat. Shia Ansarullah fighters, however, have intervened to fill the vacuum and have driven al-Qaeda militants out of many areas in the country.
