CAIRO: Seven people were killed and more than 15 wounded by a bomb on Friday in the Yemeni city Marib, east of the capital Sanaa, police said.

It was not clear who planted the device which went off around midday in the heart of a crowded market where the narcotic leaf qat is sold, they said.

Marib has most of Yemen’s oil and gas fields and has long been a battleground between factions including local tribesmen, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) insurgents and other Islamists, and government forces.

On April 24 an air strike from a drone killed two men south of Marib city suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda, said local residents.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies have intervened in Yemen’s civil war since March last year, fighting in support of Yemen’s government after it was forced into exile by the Iran-allied Houthi group.

Renewed fighting across Yemen is threatening to wreck a truce that had largely held since April 10, buttressing a round of UN-backed peace talks in Kuwait aimed at ending the conflict.

The war has killed more than 6,200 people, displaced more than 2.5 million and caused a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the world’s poorest countries.

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2016