SANAA: A suicide bomber killed a Yemeni tribesman on Friday as he headed to the funeral of the spiritual leader of Zaidi Shia rebels who have been observing an uneasy truce with the government, a rebel spokesman and tribal sources said.
The bombing also wounded another eight tribesmen who had travelled up from eastern Yemen 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.
"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 that the mourners had been hit by a suicide bombing on their way to 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 Shia 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 militant 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 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 been repeatedly shaken by clashes between the rebels and pro-government tribes, prompting a series of mediation missions to shore it up.
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.
