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Gunmen fired on a Yemeni provincial leader’s motorcade Monday, killing at least five security officers and wounding two others, according to authorities.
The attack targeted Taiz Governor Nabil Shamsan on a road linking the southwestern city to the rest of the country, said Mohamed Abdel-Rahman, a provincial spokesperson. Abdel-Rahman added that two assailants were killed in the shootout.
In a statement, the governor’s office said security and military forces were working to bring those behind the attack to justice. No group has immediately claimed credit for the attack so far.
The province’s capital, also named Taiz, has been a battleground pitting the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and other militias backed by the Islamist Islah party against each other as well as other factions embroiled in Yemen’s civil war.
Taiz, in the southwest, is the junction of two crucial highways: an east-west road leading to the coastal city of Mocha on the Red Sea, and another north-south, to Sanaa via Dhamar and Ibb provinces.
It has been under Houthi blockade since 2016 as part of their war against the internationally recognised Yemeni government.
The country’s brutal civil war began in 2014, when Houthi rebels marched from their northern stronghold of Saada province and forced the internationally recognised government into exile.
A Saudi-led coalition that included the United Arab Emirates entered the Yemen war the following year in an attempt to restore the exiled government.
The war has been stagnant in recent years, after the Houthis reached a deal with Saudi Arabia which agreed to ceasing their cross-border attacks on the kingdom in return for Riyadh, and its allies, halting their strikes on their territories.
Additional sources • AP