Car blast wounds Yemen intelligence officer

A Yemeni intelligence officer was seriously wounded when his car exploded on Tuesday in the main Southern city of Aden. The attack is the second in a week against an intelligence officer in Aden after suspected al-Qaeda gunmen killed Colonel Marwan al-Maqbali there on Thursday. "Colonel Saleh al-Qadi was seriously wounded in the explosion of a car that was probably booby-trapped," the security official told AFP. "He was taken to the hospital," the official said, standing near debris of the still-burning vehicle in Aden's district of Crater. He said that police could not immediately know if the attack was carried out by al-Qaeda, blamed for most of the increasingly common hit-and-run strikes targeting military personnel and officials. The jihadist group rarely claims responsibility for such attacks, but did admit being behind a brazen daylight assault on the defence ministry in Sanaa that killed 56 people on Dec. 5. The Saudi-backed Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) took advantage of a decline in central government control during Yemen's 2011 uprising to seize large swathes of territory across the South. The militants were driven back in June 2012 by a military offensive and the group has been further weakened by US drone strikes. AQAP is considered by Washington to be the most dangerous affiliate of the al-Qaeda network.