IS suicide bomber kills 37 police recruits

The victims were queuing up to register when the bomb, which wounded 25 others, went off, the sources said. It was the second deadly blast in four days to hit the city, a hub for al Qaeda before the militant group was pushed out last month in an offensive by Yemeni troops backed by a Saudi-led coalition. 

In a message on its online news agency Amaq, Islamic State said today’s attacker was a martrydom-seeker who had detonated his explosive belt. It said around 40 died in the attack. 

The city’s security director, Mubarak al-Awthaban, who was at a nearby office when the suicide bomber struck the Fowa camp in the southern part of Mukalla, survived, security sources said. 

The US military announced last week it had deployed a small number of personnel to Yemen to aid in the fight against IS.