Al-Qaeda suspects among 1,200 who escaped from Yemen prison

SANAA: Around 1,200 prisoners escaped during clashes at a jail in central Yemen on Tuesday, among them Al-Qaeda suspects, officials and security sources said.
“Groups of Al-Qaeda supporters ... today attacked the central prison in the city of Taiz and more than 1,200 of the dangerous prisoners escaped,” state news agency Saba quoted a security official as saying.
Another local official told Reuters some of the escapees were “suspected of belonging to Al-Qaeda” but said they left amid heavy clashes between warring militias in the city.
Meanwhile, an attack on Houthi rebel leaders in Yemen’s capital claimed by Daesh killed at least 28 people, medics said Tuesday.
Yemen was previously the preserve of Daesh’s rival Al-Qaeda, which controls swathes of the south and east, but since March the group has claimed a string of high-profile attacks.
The car bomb late Monday targeted two brothers, both rebel chiefs, during a gathering to mourn the death of a relative, a security source said. Eight women were among the dead.
The explosion blew a crater in the road, took chunks out of nearby walls and left debris strewn across the street.
Daesh said in an online statement it had organized the attack on what it called a “Shiite nest.” The group has repeatedly targeted them, not only in Yemen but across the region. Last Friday, a Daesh suicide bomber killed 26 people and wounded 227 in a mosque in Kuwait.
The group launched its Yemen campaign in March with a series of bombings of Shiite mosques that killed 142 people.
The attacks have overshadowed the operations of rival Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula which overran Mukalla, capital of Hadramawt province in southeast Yemen, in March.
Washington still regards AQAP as the network’s most dangerous branch and has kept up a drone war against its leaders inside Yemen. But analysts say Daesh is now clearly in the ascendant.