“I have said before that the hard-earned progress that Yemen has made on de-escalation is very fragile. Such actions can derail this progress,” Martin Griffiths warned, urging all parties to “stop the escalation” and focus energies into policy instead.

###

The attack happened in the province of Marib on Saturday at a mosque at a military camp, in what Yemen’s President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi condemned as a “heinous” and “cowardly terrorist operation committed by the Houthis.”

###

Yemen has been embroiled in a yearslong civil war that has pitted a coalition backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.

###

Yemen’s Ministry of Defense said the attack was “to avenge the killing of the Iranian terrorist Qasem Soleimani,” who died in a US drone strike in Iraq on January 3. The ministry offered no evidence to show how it might know the rebels’ motive.

###

The attack does come, however, as several nations in the Middle East ready themselves for retaliatory attacks by Iranian-backed militias.

###

Yemen’s Defense Ministry said “the armed forces will remain the solid rock that breaks the ambitions” of Iran’s goal of destabilizing security in Yemen and the wider region, according to a statement carried by Yemeni state news agency Saba.

###

The Houthis did not make any immediate claim of responsibility.

Click Here: creed perfume sale