ISIS militants have claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing in Yemen that took place Thursday morning. The blast occurred outside President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Rabbu Hadi’s residence in Aden, and has claimed seven lives.
A local official told Reuters that the car bomb was positioned at a security checkpoint less than half a mile from the Maashiq palace.
In an official statement online, ISIS had identified the bomber by the pseudonym Abu Hanifa al-Hollandi. Hollandi is allegedly a Dutch citizen, given the etymology of his nom de guerre. President Hadi fled the capital of Sana’a in 2014 and has been based in Aden since, where his recently re-seized government has been fighting to assert itself.
ISIS has carried out multiple attacks before involving VBIED-type explosives in Yemen, specifically in the Aden province. The most recent of these occurred on Dec. 6, when General Jaafar Mohammed Saad and at least six of his aides fatally encountered a vehicle packed with explosives in the Tawahi district.
Since the Yemeni mosque attack in September and ISIS’s subsequent “first official” attacks on the Yemeni government in October, the number of attacks on political figures in the region have continued to increase. The intensification of the rivalry between ISIS militants and affiliates of AQAP (al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula) has been a major incentive for ISIS to intensify its efforts.