CNN anchor killed in Yemen car bombing

Editor’s Note — in our Carry-On Bag series, the CNN International Advisory Board shares a story from around the world. Our goal is to introduce you to people, places and things from around the…

CNN anchor killed in Yemen car bombing

Editor’s Note — in our Carry-On Bag series, the CNN International Advisory Board shares a story from around the world. Our goal is to introduce you to people, places and things from around the world that we think CNN viewers should know about.

(CNN) — Mariam al-Mohsen was a top news anchor on Yemen’s TV channel Al-Masirah.

She also contributed stories to CNN Arabic television and CNN.com, and was the president of the local chapter of the Lebanese journalists’ syndicate.

And when she was pregnant with her second child, al-Mohsen survived a suicide bombing that killed her husband and several of her co-workers.

Now, she’s also dead.

A car bomb exploded in her car in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Sunday, killing her and injuring three other journalists, according to CNN affiliate Amaq.

The al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group in Yemen, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, claimed responsibility for the attack, calling al-Mohsen a “detachment of the White House,” CNN reported.

The attack occurred Sunday night as al-Mohsen drove in Sanaa’s Martyrs Square, according to the Southern Railway Organization, al-Masirah’s parent company. The organization said in a statement on its official Twitter account that the journalists’ car had been targeted in “a terrorist terrorist car bomb” and that several of its members were killed or injured.

In a statement, Al-Masirah said it was “horrified and heartbroken” at al-Mohsen’s death.

A Reuters photographer and one of the journalists in the car, Waqas Sharif, were wounded and recovering, the news agency reported.

Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack

Al-Qaeda also claimed responsibility for a hotel bombing in a Sanaa suburb in October, killing 27 people.

Al-Qaida said in November that it had assassinated cleric Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, who founded a Muslim reform movement and led the country’s third largest Muslim political party.

The group has vowed to press on despite the recent U.S. military campaign against it in Yemen.

“We have no peace or weakness and we have no retreat from war until we break the claws of the coalition,” al-Qaeda said in a video in early December.

Trump says U.S. under scrutiny

A Yemeni official told CNN earlier this month that al-Qaeda wants to demonstrate it has the capacity to strike the “most senior figures” in Yemen’s internationally recognized government, in part in order to further sow chaos in the country and eventually make it ungovernable.

The official said al-Qaeda is trying to get the attention of Donald Trump, who is planning to visit the country soon.

“It’s their final push to show the world they can still attack the most important targets in Yemen,” the official said.

The campaign against the terror group began in September, when Yemeni air force planes killed at least 10 al-Qaeda militants in an air strike in south-central Yemen.

The United States has long targeted al-Qaeda in Yemen, where a U.S. resident — 29-year-old Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens — was killed in a recent raid.

The US is one of the largest supporters of the Yemeni government, which it helped to take power after the ouster of Houthi rebels in 2014.

With international support, the Yemeni government has struggled to combat al-Qaeda in a country where much of the infrastructure is in ruins from war, the Arab world’s poorest.

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