Death toll in Yemen mosque bombings rises to 126. Islamic State claims responsibility

SANAA, Yemen — Suicide bombers in the Yemeni capital Sanaa blew themselves up during noon prayers at two mosques on Friday, killing at least 126 people and wounding scores, medical sources said, in a major escalation of the worst wave of violence in the country in years.

The attacks, in which bombers wearing explosive belts targeted worshippers in and outside the crowded mosques, happened a day after an unidentified warplane attacked the presidential palace in the southern city of Aden.

Anti-aircraft guns opened fire on planes flying high over the presidential compound in Aden on Friday, government sources and witnesses said.

Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot that has seized large areas of Iraq and Syria, has claimed responsibility for the blasts in the mosques, which are used mainly by supporters of the Shi'ite Muslim Houthi group which has seized control of the government.

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Yemen is torn by a power struggle between the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in the north and the U.N.-recognized President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has set up a rival seat in the south with the backing of Sunni-led Gulf Arab states.

The mosques in Sanaa are known to be used mainly by supporters of the Shi'ite Muslim Houthi group, which controls most of northern Yemen, including Sanaa.

The rise to power of the Houthis since September last year has deepened divisions in Yemen's complex web of political and religious allegiances, and left the country increasingly cut off from the outside world.

One witness said he heard two successive blasts at one of the mosques, known as the Badr mosque, in a busy neighborhood in central Sanaa.

"I was going to pray at the mosque then I heard the first explosion, and a second later I heard another one," the witness told Reuters.

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Hospitals in Sanaa appealed for blood donors to help treat the large number of casualties. A Reuters witness at the scene of the Badr mosque said he counted at least 25 bloody bodies or corpses lying in the street and inside the mosque building.

One man carried a child in his arms.

The Houthi-linked Al-Masirah television channel showed young men dressed in traditional Yemeni clothes carrying lifeless bodies, some still dripping with blood, out of the mosque.

A third suicide bomber tried to blow himself up in one of the main mosques in the northern Houthi stronghold of Sadaa province but the bomb went off prematurely, killing the bomber only, a security source told Reuters.

Tensions have risen since Hadi fled to Aden in February after escaping a month of house arrest in Sanaa by Houthi forces in control of the capital.

Hadi has been trying to consolidate his hold over Aden, the better to mount a challenge to the Houthis' ambitions to control the whole country.

Thirteen people were killed on Thursday when forces loyal to Hadi fought their way into Aden's international airportand wrested an adjacent military base from a renegade officer, Aden governor Abdulaziz bin Habtoor said.

Both the fighting on the ground and subsequent air attack appeared to be part of a deepening power struggle between Hadi and the Houthi group, which is allied with former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, a fierce critic of Hadi.

On Friday, a cautious calm returned to Aden as the Yemeni president appeared to be consolidating his control over the city. The airport reopened and flights resumed as normal, an airport official told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Mohammed Mukhashaf; Writing by Rania El Gamal, Editing by Sami Aboudi/William Maclean/Hugh Lawson/Giles Elgood)