At least 12 civilians were killed Saturday in a suspected terror attack near the airport of Aden, the Yemeni government's interim capital, a senior security official said.
'Twelve civilians were killed in an explosion' in the vicinity of Aden airport and 'there are also serious injuries', said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that the cause of the blast was unknown.
It was not immediately clear whether the incident was an attack. One security source said the car exploded at an outer entrance to the airport near an airport hotel.
The explosion comes almost three weeks after six people were killed in a car-bomb attack that targeted Aden's governor, who survived.
Footage on Saturday showed people pulling out a body from a vehicle that had been completely destroyed, as firefighters put out flames nearby. Aden is the temporary home of Yemen's internationally-recognised government, which has as part of a coalition backed by Saudi Arabia been fighting the Iran-aligned Houthi group for around seven years.
But tensions have also for years simmered within Aden itself between the government and southern separatist groups.
The government and the Southern Transitional Council (STC) are nominal allies under the Saudi-led coalition. Earlier this month a car bomb in Aden targeting a convoy carrying the city's governor - an STC member - killed at least six people and wounded others. The governor survived.
Instability in the south complicates United Nations-led peace efforts to end the war in Yemen which has killed tens of thousands of people and left 80 percent of the population needing help.
Yemen has been convulsed by civil war since 2014 when the Houthis captured the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country's north, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee to the south, then to Saudi Arabia.The Saudi-led coalition entered the war in March 2015, backed by the United States, to try restore the government to power. Despite a relentless air campaign and ground fighting, the war has fallen largely into a stalemate, and spawned the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
On Thursday, a Houthi ballistic missile struck a residential neighborhood in the central province of Marib, killing at least 11 civilians and wounding 16 others.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for Saturday's blast, which is the deadliest in the area since December last year, when an attack targeting cabinet members ripped through Aden's airport.
At least 26 people, including three members of the International Committee of the Red Cross, were killed and scores were wounded when explosions rocked the airport as ministers disembarked from an aircraft.
All cabinet members were reported to be unharmed, in what some ministers charged was a Huthi attack.
The internationally recognised government relocated to Aden from the capital Sanaa in 2014, forced out by the Huthis, who are fighting Saudi-backed Yemeni government loyalists.
In recent weeks, fighting has intensified around the government's sole remaining northern stronghold - the city of Marib in the oil-rich province of the same name.
The coalition has said it has killed a total of around 2,000 rebels around the city in almost daily strikes since October 11.
Yemen is also home to Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which launches periodic attacks against both fighters aligned with the country's authorities and the insurgents.
Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have been killed and millions displaced in Yemen's conflict, which the United Nations has called the world's worst humanitarian disaster.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow...
The explosion comes after Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries expelled Lebanese envoys in a diplomatic spat that risks adding to Lebanon's economic crisis, following critical comments about the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen by Lebanon's Information Minister George Kordahi.
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said on Saturday the latest crisis with Lebanon has its origins in a Lebanese political setup that reinforces the dominance of the Iran-backed Hezbollah armed group and continues to allow endemic instability.
'I think the issue is far broader than the current situation,' Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud told Reuters in a phone interview. 'I think it's important that the government in Lebanon or the Lebanese establishment forges a path forward that frees Lebanon from the current political construct, which reinforces the dominance of Hezbollah.'
He said this setup 'is weakening state institutions within Lebanon, in a way that makes Lebanon continue to process in a direction against the interests of the people of Lebanon.'
The row has triggered calls by some Lebanese politicians for the resignation of Kordahi, while others opposed such a move, which could undermine the government as a whole.
'We have no opinion about the government in Lebanon. We have no opinion as to whether it stays or goes, this is up to the Lebanese people,' the minister, speaking from Rome where he was attending the G20 summit, said.
Kordahi has been publicly backed by Hezbollah and has declined to apologise or resign over the comments.