Six killed in Yemen weapons depot blast - Pakistan Daily Times

Six killed in Yemen weapons depot blast

ADEN/DUBAI: An accidental blast at an army ammunitions depot stocked with mines and explosives killed six soldiers in south Yemen on Monday, a local municipality official said.
The blast occurred on Monday morning in an explosives warehouse at an army base in the southern port city of Aden, killing six soldiers and injured others, local municipality chief Abdel Munim al Abd told AFP.
He said an initial investigation revealed that the explosion took place while soldiers were organising the explosives in the warehouse.
According to Munim, the warehouse was stocked with large quantities of mines and explosives that were recovered after al Qaedas retreat from their strongholds in the southern Abyan province in June.
Local residents said a series of loud blasts rang out across the city and large plumes of smoke could be seen rising from the site.
This is the second such accident in Yemen in less than a week.
On Thursday, a shell fired accidentally at an army weapons depot in the Yemeni capital Sanaa killed two people and injured seven others.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsulas (AQAP) second-in-command denied his own death at the hands of the Yemeni army in an audio message posted on jihadist forums, SITE Intelligence reported on Monday.
The monitoring service said Saeed al Shehri accused the army of fabricating his death to cover up the killing of civilians by American aircraft in an audio message produced by the groups media arm and posted online on Saturday.
The Yemeni government didnt stop claiming responsibility for the killing of innocent Muslims in Al Bayda in south Yemen on behalf of America, and when it saw that the people werent tricked by this lie, they brought in another lie in order to hide the issue, which is the killing of Saeed al Shehri, he said.
On September 10, the Yemeni Defence Ministry announced troops had killed Shehri in a raid in the eastern Yemeni province of Hadramawt.
At the time, the Defence Ministry said, Six other terrorist elements accompanying Shehri were also killed, adding that his death dealt a painful blow to whats left of Yemen-based AQAP, which Washington considers to be the global jihadist group al Qaedas deadliest and most active franchise.
A tribal source told AFP after the raid that a ground operation had taken place in Hadramawt, but would not confirm Shehris death.
Shehris audio comments refer the repeated US drone attacks in Yemen that target al Qaeda suspects in the countrys mostly lawless south and east.
Shehri escaped death in September last year when US drones carried out several air strikes on the village of al Mahfad in the southern Abyan province, a former al Qaeda stronghold.
The militant leader was released from Guantanamo in 2007 and was flown to Saudi Arabia where he was put through a rehabilitation programme.
But after completing the programme, Shehri disappeared and later resurfaced as AQAPs second-in-charge.
Al Qaeda never confirmed Shehris death and last month, Saudi Arabia announced it too could not confirm that he had died during the Yemeni army operation. afp

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