File Photo: Members of the Islamic State militant group. (Associated Press)
A car bomb exploded outside an Ismaili mosque in Yemen's war-damaged capital Sanaa on Wednesday, killing four people and wounding six, health authorities and a security source said.
The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the attack on the Al Faydh Alhatemy mosque, more commonly known as Burhani, in the eastern Sanaa of Nuqum, describing the bombing as revenge for what it called Ismaili support for Yemen's dominant Houthi movement.
Three people were killed in the attack and seven were wounded, a security source said. A spokesperson at the Ministry of Health later said put the death toll at four and the wounded at six as one person did not immediately die of their injuries.
Ismailis are a minority Shi'ite Muslim sect in Yemen, as are the Zaydi Shi'ites, a community whose interests the Houthi group says it defends, while Islamic State is a radical Sunni group.
The blast was the second bombing in Sanaa in three days. A bomb exploded underneath a passenger bus in the southerly Dar Selm area on Sunday, killing three people and wounding five.
No one has claimed responsibility for that blast, but a number of previous such explosions in the city and elsewhere in Yemen have been claimed by Islamic State in recent months.
The Houthis, backed by army units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, have been waging a four-month-old war against a Saudi-led Arab coalition that has been seeking to restore to power exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
© Thomson Reuters 2015