[Geo TV] A car boom in south Yemen on Thursday killed two people and maimed at least 13 others, a local official said, adding that the authorities had yet to establish who was behind the attack.The kaboom seemed to have been caused by a bomb inside a car belonging to an intelligence official and parked near a security building in bustling Dalea city, the official said.
The bomb killed two passers-by and two soldiers were among those maimed, he said.
Yemen is at the center of a global security alert after the discovery last week of a plot to mail two parcels containing bombs from Yemen to the United States.
Officials say the plot bore the hallmarks of the Yemen-based regional al Qaeda wing, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The Yemeni government has launched a manhunt for those responsible, prompting a suspected reprisal attack on an oil pipeline.
In a separate attack on Thursday, masked gunnies shot and maimed a soldier manning a checkpoint elsewhere in Dalea province.
Earlier on Thursday, southern secessionists had taken to the streets in Dalea in a weekly demonstration to protest against the detention of separatists.
Violence in southern Yemen, where secessionist sentiment is strong, has been picking up again in recent weeks, after a surge of tit-for-tat fighting between government forces and separatists earlier this year.
North and South Yemen formally united in 1990 but some in the south, where many of Yemen's oil facilities are located, complain northerners have used unification to seize resources and discriminate against them.