Suicide bomber kills Yemen mourner
SANAA — A suicide bomber killed a tribesman on Friday travelling to the funeral of the spiritual head of Shiite rebels observing an uneasy truce with Yemen's government, a rebel spokesman and tribal sources said.
The bombing in northern Yemen also wounded another eight tribal dignitaries who had travelled up from the east of the country for the funeral of Badreddin al-Huthi, who died on Thursday at the age of 86, the sources said.
The attack came just two days after a suicide car bomber killed 23 Zaidi Shiite rebel fighters or supporters as they took part in a religious procession in Al-Jawf province.
"One person was martyred" and "eight people were wounded, some seriously, when a car carrying tribesmen from Maarib province on their way from Saada to Dahyan, exploded," rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam told AFP by telephone.
He said that the attack on the three-car convoy headed to the funeral venue near the Saudi border from the rebel stronghold of Saada was the work of a suicide bomber.
Tribal sources confirmed the mourners had been hit by a suicide bombing on their way to Dahyan.
Following the attack, the rebels searched all cars coming into Saada, witnesses told AFP.
"In a terrorist incident," a bomb-laden car attacked a "convoy from Maarib province which was coming to participate in the funeral of the scholar Badreddin" al-Huthi, the rebels said on their website.
The car targeted the convoy because Maarib province has become a stronghold for "Wahhabis and the Saudi agents of Al-Qaeda," they added.
Abdulsalam accused the United States and Israel of being behind "what is called the Al-Qaeda network."
Spiritual leader Badreddin al-Huthi was the father of rebel commander Abdulmalik al-Huthi and of his predecessor Hussein al-Huthi, who has been killed in the on-off Shiite uprising in northern Yemen that erupted in 2004.
Badreddin al-Huthi, whose Shiite faith makes up the majority community in Yemen's northern mountains but a minority in the mainly Sunni country as a whole, had long suffered from asthma, the rebel spokesman told AFP.
A tribal chief has blamed Al-Qaeda for Wednesday's bombing, which he has said was aimed at stoking sectarian tensions.
Yemen is the ancestral homeland of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and has been a growing focus for the operations of his worldwide network, sparking a sharp increase in US military aid.
But its attacks had previously been largely confined to the capital Sanaa and to the mainly Sunni south and east of Yemen, rather than the Zaidi majority north.
The latest round of fighting between the Zaidi rebels and the government culminated in a Qatari-brokered truce in February but it has repeatedly been challenged by clashes between the rebels and pro-government tribes.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees says more than 300,000 people have fled the fighting in the north, of whom just 20,000 have so far returned to homes in Saada province.
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