ISIL claims car bomb in Yemen capital, three dead

DUBAI - Reuters

Workers install a security camera outside the Al A'ali Grand Mosque, where joint Sunni and Shi'ites prayers are to be held to show solidarity and co-existence between the two sects of Islam, ahead of Friday prayers in Al A'ali south of Manama, July 3, 2015. Reuters Photo

A car bomb exploded outside an Ismaili mosque in an eastern district of the Yemen's war-damaged capital Sanaa on July 29, killing three people and wounding seven, a security source said. 

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attack on the Al Faydh Alhatemy mosque in the Nuqum district, describing it as revenge for what it called Ismaili support for Yemen's dominant Houthi movement. 

Ismailis are a minority Shi'ite Muslim sect, as are the Zaydi Shi'ites, a community whose interests the Houthi group says it defends. 

The blast was the second bombing in Sanaa in three days. A bomb exploded underneath a passenger bus in the southerly Dar Selm area on July 26, killing three people and wounding five. 

No one has claimed responsibility for that blast, but a number of previous such explosions in the city and elsewhere in Yemen have been claimed by ISIL in recent months. 

The Houthis, backed by army units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, have been fighting a four-month-old war against a Saudi-led Arab coalition that has been seeking to restore to power exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.