Mourners were heading to funeral of spiritual Zaidi Shiite leader
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 rebel fighters or supporters as they took part in a religious procession in neighboring al-Jawf province.
The mourners were on their way from the rebel stronghold of Saada to the town of Dahyan close to the Saudi border where the ceremony was to take place, the sources said.
"The car that was carrying tribesmen from Maarib province on their way from Saada to Dahyan exploded," rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam told AFP by telephone, adding that it was the work of a suicide bomber who had infiltrated the three-car convoy.
Tribal sources confirmed that the mourners had been hit by a suicide bombing on their way to the funeral in Dahyan.
Badreddin al-Huthi is the father of rebel commander Abdulmalik al-Huthi and of his predecessor Hussein al-Huthi, who was killed during the on-off uprising that began in 2004.
He was one of the most eminent spiritual leaders of the Zaidi branch of the Shiite faith, which is the majority community in Yemen’s northern mountains but a minority in the mainly Sunni country as a whole.
Badreddin al-Huthi had long suffered from asthma, the rebel spokesman told AFP.
A tribal chief pointed the finger for Wednesday’s bombing at al-Qaeda, accusing the fanatically Sunni jihadist network of seeking to stoke 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 U.S. 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 been repeatedly shaken by clashes between the rebels and pro-government tribes, prompting a series of mediation missions to shore it up.
The U.N. 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.