(Reuters) - A suicide bomber in army uniform killed more than 90 soldiers in the heart of the Yemeni capital on Monday and an al Qaeda affiliate threatened more attacks if a U.S.-backed campaign against militants in the front-line state did not stop.
The bombing, which wounded more than 200 people, underscored the dangers Yemen faces as it battles Islamist militants entrenched in the south and threatening shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.
The explosion left scenes of carnage in Sanaa's Sabaeen Square, where the military had been rehearsing for a parade. Body parts lay strewn across a 10-lane road not far from the presidential palace.
"We had just finished the parade. We were saluting our commander when a huge explosion went off," said soldier Amr Habib. "It was a gruesome attack. Many soldiers were killed and others had their arms and legs blown off."
When ever I read these sad reports a couple of questions spring to mind.
1. How do you persuade a person to strap high explosives to his or her body and then perform an act of mass murder on people he/she has probably never met and therefore does not know?
2. If I was the person having the high explosives strapped to his or her body, I would ask the person who was doing the strapping. "If this is such a good idea, why am I the one who is shortly going to be blown into oblivion and not you?"
The above goes double for the suicide bomber who had a stick of dynamite shoved up his rectum, which he then detonated in a room containing a Saudi Prince. An elementary knowledge of physics would have told him that the only thing that was going to happen was the splattering of his own offal over a relatively small area.
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