SANAA (AFP) — One policeman was killed and 17 people were wounded when a suicide bomber in a car detonated his device outside a police headquarters in the east Yemen town of Sayun on Friday, local police said.
A police official blamed "extremist terrorists who use Islam as a cover" for the attack, which he said targeted a compound housing the Central Security and General Security networks, the Saba state news agency reported.
The official, who was not named, said 11 policemen and six women were wounded, adding that the explosion damaged neighbouring houses.
The driver of the booby-trapped vehicle had not been identified and was "torn into pieces" by the blast, Saba said earlier quoting another unnamed police official.
Sayun, in the heart of Hadramut province, is 700 kilometres (430 miles) east of the capital Sanaa, and is known for its mud-brick architecture.
The attack was claimed by a little-known Islamist radical group, the Organisation of Islamic Jihad in Yemen.
"We, the Organisation of Islamic Jihad in Yemen, claim responsibility for the martyr attack in Hadramut, and congratulate the martyr (attacker) for being rewarded in paradise," the group said in an emailed statement.
"This act is a (lesson) to those who might be tempted to harm the religion of Islam, and we announce that we will annihilate them. Our start was in Hadramut on Friday... and will stretch to reach every corrupted part of Yemen," it added.
The statement demanded the Yemeni government pay "a fine of five million dollars if it wants an end to the attacks that are terrifying the people."
The group first came into the spotlight last month when it issued a statement demanding the cancellation of a summer festival, which starts this Saturday in the capital Sanaa, featuring Arab pop concerts.
"If the festival is not cancelled within 48 hours, we will turn it into crying and wailing," Friday's statement warned, accusing the organisers of "corrupting" minds through singing and the mixing of sexes.
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