At least two civilians were killed and four others wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a public square in Yemen's southern port city of Aden on Saturday, a security official told Xinhua.

The source said the suicide assailant detonated his explosive belt amid civilians who gathered near a cinema in Aden's neighborhood of Crater, leaving two people dead and four others injured at the scene.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Many of the previous armed attacks against the Saudi-backed Yemeni government in Aden have been claimed by the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch or the militant Islamic State (IS) group.

On Thursday, the IS group claimed responsibility for assassinating a police officer by attaching an improvised explosive device to the underside of his car.

Yemen, an impoverished Arab country, has been gripped by one of the most active regional al-Qaida insurgencies in the Middle East.

The Yemen-based al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), also known locally as Ansar al-Sharia, emerged in January 2009. It had claimed responsibility for a number of terrorist attacks on Yemen's army and government institutions.

It took advantage of the current security vacuum resulted from 19 months of civil war and the internal military conflict to expand its influence and seize more territories in Yemen's southern part.

The security situation in Yemen has severely deteriorated since March 2015, when a war broke out between the Shiite Houthi group, supported by former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the government backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition.

More than 6,400 people have been killed in ground battles and airstrikes since then, half of them civilians.

Source : XINHUA