ADEN, Yemen, July 24 (Xinhua) -- A suicide bomb blast ripped through a police checkpoint and targeted a high-ranking security commander in Yemen's southern port city of Aden on Tuesday, a security official told Xinhua.
The security source, who asked to remain anonymous, said that a motorcycle-riding suicide bomber blew himself up and targeted a vehicle carrying a high-ranking military commander near a police checkpoint in Enma area of Aden province.
Colonel Abu Muhtam, the anti-terror commander of Aden's Fourth Security Battalion, was inside his armored vehicle near the police checkpoint and has escaped unharmed, the security source said.
Medical sources confirmed to Xinhua that the explosion killed three and injured seven others.
"Our rescuers rushed with ambulances to the bombing site in Enma," a medical official said, adding that "some passers-by including a woman and two children were injured and shifted immediately to receive treatment."
No organizations have immediately claimed responsibility for the suicide attack.
However, police sources in Aden blamed militants of the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch (AQAP) and the Islamic State (IS) group for being behind such suicide attack.
Considered as Yemen's temporary capital, Aden is where the Saudi-backed government has been based since 2015.
For the past two years, the al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, and other terrorist groups, including the IS, have been active in southern Yemen.
The impoverished Arab country has been locked into a civil war since late 2014, when the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels overran much of the country and seized all northern provinces, including the capital Sanaa.
Saudi Arabia is leading an Arab military coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015 to support the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after Houthi rebels forced him into exile.
The United Nations has listed Yemen as the country of the world's most serious humanitarian crisis, where seven million Yemenis on the brink of famine and cholera have caused more than 2,300 deaths.
