Local Editor

The so-called "Daesh" ["ISIL"] extremist group took responsibility for the recent attacks on the ousted Yemeni government and its Gulf Arab coalition ally in the port city of Aden which killed 22 people.

It was the first known direct "ISIL" assault on the American-backed Saudi-led coalition.

UAE officials earlier in the day had blamed the Ansarullah for the attacks. However, Ansarullah 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," Qahoom said on his Twitter account, referring to the Saudi-led coalition.

Four coordinated "ISIL" suicide bombings killed 11 Yemeni and four United Arab Emirates [UAE] soldiers in Aden, Yemeni officials and the UAE state news agency said.

The ousted Yemeni government set up temporary headquarters in Aden’s al-Qasr hotel recently last month [September]. 

The Vice President of the overthrown government, Khaled Bahah, who is also prime minister, as well as Cabinet colleagues escaped unharmed from what he said were car bomb attacks in Aden, two of which targeted the al-Qasr hotel.

"Today’s attack does not affect anybody. On the contrary, it binds us together more", he told a Cabinet meeting afterwards in comments carried by Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television.

"We had come here to work and we know that there are security gaps ... But this now prompts us to do more in the framework of reinforcing security in a bigger way by the general security services and armed forces", he added.

The UAE state news agency WAM said that suicide bombers also targeted two Gulf Arab military sites in Aden. Furthermore, the suicide bombers in Aden were driving Yemeni army vehicles, a Yemeni military source told Reuters. 

Extremist militants of various allegiances had tried to establish themselves in Aden but faced resistance from local movements. 

"ISIL", which is centered in Iraq and Syria, first emerged in Yemen in March with a series of suicide attacks on mosques in which 137 people died.

In a separate attack in eastern Yemen, a local official said that Yemeni forces foiled an attempt by al-Qaeda militants on Tuesday to seize facilities at the al-Masilah oil field in Hadramawt province. The official said there were casualties on both sides in the gunfight but provided no further details.

This comes as Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies backed by the United States began to launch a military aggression against Yemen by launching air strikes against the country in an attempt to restore power to the fugitive former Yemeni President, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Saudi Arabia.

The airstrikes have not been authorized by the UN.