Aden Car Bombing (2016)
The Aden car bombing of August 29, 2016, was a devastating attack that struck a military recruitment center in the southern Yemeni city of Aden. Conducted by ISIS, the bombing resulted in the deaths of seventy-one individuals and injured at least sixty-seven others, marking one of the deadliest attacks in Aden during the ongoing Yemeni civil war. The assault targeted young military recruits preparing to join government forces against the Houthi rebels, who had taken control of the capital, Sana'a, in 2014. The attack showcased ISIS's strategy of exploiting the chaos in Yemen, where various factions, including Houthi forces and supporters of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, were engaged in brutal conflict.
Witnesses reported that the car bomb detonated as recruits were entering the center, leading to extensive damage and chaos. Security measures at the recruitment center were described as inadequate, highlighting the pervasive violence in the region. The incident was part of a broader pattern of violence in Yemen, where ISIS and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have capitalized on the civil war to launch attacks against military and civilian targets. The ongoing conflict has resulted in significant loss of life and displacement, with the United Nations estimating thousands of casualties and millions displaced since the conflict escalated in 2015.
Subject Terms
Aden Car Bombing (2016)
Date: August 29, 2016
Place: Aden, Yemen
Summary
Unrest has wracked Yemen since at least 2011, with an insurgency led by Houthi rebels in the north of the country sweeping into the capital city of Sana’a in 2014, displacing the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who fled to Aden on the southern coast. Since 2015, the violence in the country has been commonly identified as a civil war between the Houthis based in Sana’a and the Hadi loyalists based in Aden. Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have taken advantage of the chaos to gain control in outlying rural areas. Since 2015, AQAP has in turn been challenged by the arrival of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which competes with AQAP for recruits. ISIS, which is hostile to both sides in the Yemeni Civil War, carried out a series of attacks in 2015 and 2016, including the bombing of a military recruitment center in August 2016 in Aden. This bombing killed seventy-one people and injured at least another sixty-seven, making it by some estimates the most lethal single attack in the city of Aden up to that point.
Key Events
- August 29, 2016—A car containing explosives speeds into a military recruiting center in Aden, Yemen. The blast kills seventy-one people and wounds at least another sixty-seven.
Status
As of late 2016, the civil war in Yemen was ongoing and ISIS was continuing its attempts to push into the country through violence and recruitment efforts. The warring parties of the Houthi rebels and forces of President Hadi initially agreed to a cease-fire in April 2016, but the violence continued throughout the summer of 2016.
In-Depth Overview
On the morning of August 29, 2016, a car bomb exploded in the busy neighborhood of Mansoura in the southern port city of Aden, Yemen. The bomb targeted military recruits, mostly in their twenties and thirties, who were getting ready to join government forces to fight against Shiite Houthi rebels in northern Yemen, adjacent to the border with Saudi Arabia. Some seventy-one people were killed and at least sixty-seven more were injured. Authorities stated that the bomb blast was so powerful that it shattered windows and damaged the structures of several nearby buildings. The detonation took place near two schools and a mosque.
Shortly after the attack, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack through its news network, Amaq News Agency. ISIS’s core goal is to establish a global caliphate under extreme Islamic law through violence and terror. The group called the Aden car bombing a "martyrdom operation" by one of its soldiers specifically targeting the recruitment center in Aden. Witnesses stated that the attacker entered the center in a vehicle that was trailing a truck bringing in breakfast for the recruits. When soldiers opened the center’s gate to allow the truck inside, the bomb-laden vehicle sped up and crashed through.
An employee of the center told authorities that despite previous attacks around the area, security at the center was lax. According to witnesses at the scene, locals did not seem fazed by the attack, a reaction seen as evidence of how regular atrocities such as this are in Yemen. One witness stated that some civilians watched the aftermath of the bombing unfold and then went about their business as usual.
The car bombing occurred during a time when ISIS was exploiting Yemen’s civil war between the local Shiite Houthis and followers of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has been supported by a Saudi-led military coalition. The Houthis have also allied with Yemen’s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was ousted in 2012. The civil war escalated in March 2015 when Saudi-led airstrikes began targeting Houthis around their stronghold of Sana’a. The United Nations estimated that between March 2015 and August 2016, at least nine thousand people had been killed in the civil war’s violence and about three million have been displaced inside Yemen.
In 2015 and 2016, ISIS and AQAP executed a series of attacks on Yemeni senior officials, religious sites, and military compounds. In May 2016, an ISIS suicide bomber drove a car full of explosives into a line of military recruits, killing at least forty and injuring sixty others. Four bombing attacks at different security checkpoints killed forty-three people in June 2016. In July 2016, just a month before the bombing at the recruitment center, the governor of Aden survived a car bomb attack. A United Nations Security Council report published just weeks before the attack in August 2016 stated that in March and April 2016, ISIS received a large sum of money in Yemen to garner new recruits, finance operations, and purchase new weapons.
Key Figures
Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi: Internationally recognized president of Yemen at the time of the car bombing. The attack specifically targeted people enlisting in his military forces to fight the Houthi rebels.
Bibliography
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Al-Batati, S., & Youssef, N. (2016, August 29). Suicide attack kills scores of military recruits in Aden, Yemen. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/30/world/middleeast/yemen-suicide-attack-aden.html
Elwazer, S., et al. (2016, August 29). ISIS claims suicide bombing at Yemeni military training camp. CNN. Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/29/middleeast/yemen-military-camp-bombing/
Isis suicide bombing in Yemen kills dozens. (2016, August 29). The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/29/yemen-suicide-bombing-aden
Laub, Z. (2016, April 19). Yemen in crisis. Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved from http://www.cfr.org/yemen/yemen-crisis/p36488
Osborne, S. (2016, August 29). Yemen attack: Isis suicide bombing leaves at least 54 dead at army camp in Aden. Independent. Retrieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/yemen-bombing-suicide-attack-leaves-at-least-45-dead-at-army-camp-in-aden-a7214781.html
Yemen: Death toll in ISIL’s Aden bombing rises to 70. (2016, August 30). Al Jazeera. Retrieved from http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/yemen-death-toll-isil-aden-bombing-rises-70-160830040441997.html