An explosion tore through a market in northwestern Yemen on Wednesday, killing at least six people, officials said, in the latest bloodshed of a simmering war that has pitted followers of a Shiite rebel leader against government forces.Since it erupted again in January, the fighting in Saada province has killed hundreds of soldiers and rebels and forced about 35,000 people to flee their homes, among them members of Yemen's tiny, Arabic-speaking Jewish minority, according to relief officials. But there are virtually no firsthand accounts of the war in the mountainous tribal region, which borders Saudi Arabia and has long chafed under government authority.
By imposing a gantlet of checkpoints, the government has barred journalists from the area, and the Red Cross suspended aid shipments to rural parts of the province after one of its convoys was attacked May 2.
Accounts differed on the violence Wednesday. Security officials in Saada said rebels fired a mortar round in Suq al-Lail, a few miles north of the provincial capital, where people had gathered to buy khat, a mild stimulant chewed by most Yemenis. The shell landed at 1:30 p.m. near a gas station, igniting fuel tanks. The officials said six people were killed and 15 were wounded.
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