Officials in Yemen say the death toll in a suicide bombing targeting police cadets in the capital, Sanaa, has doubled, with at least 30 people killed.
Security officials say the blast happened today morning near Sanaa's police academy as the cadets gathered. They say the death toll likely will rise.
They say the suicide bomber drove a minibus and his attack wounded at least 40 people.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. Yemen's local al-Qaida branch has carried out similar attacks in the past.
The security officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they weren't authorized to brief journalists.
At the scene of the blast, the dead and wounded lay on a sidewalk against a wall. Water sprayed by firefighters to extinguish the blaze mixed with their pooled blood. A police officer's certificate sat in it, soaked crimson. A charred taxi cab smoked near what remained of the minibus, meters (yards) from a gate for the police academy.
"What happened is we were all gathering and ... (the bomber) exploded right next to all of the police college classmates," eyewitness Jamil al-Khaleedi told The Associated Press. "It went off among all of them, and they flew through the air."
Yemen's local al-Qaida branch, targeted in frequent US drone strikes in the country, has carried out similar attacks in the past. Washington considers al-Qaida in Yemen to be the world's most dangerous branch of the terror network as it has been linked to several failed attacks on the US homeland.
The blast comes as Shiite rebels known as Houthis seized large areas of Yemen, including Sanaa, earlier this year as part of a protracted power struggle with President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Their critics view them as a proxy for Shiite Iran, charges the rebels deny. Al-Qaida militants have targeted the rebels in bombings in the past.
An al-Qaida suicide bomber killed at least 24 people on December 31 in an attack on Houthis as they commemorated the birth of the Prophet Muhammad.
