The death toll of a suicide bombing and gun attack on the defense ministry complex in Sanaa Thursday has surged to 52 people, Yemen’s supreme security committee said.

The death toll of a suicide bombing and gun attack on the defense ministry complex in Sanaa Thursday has surged to 52 people, Yemen's supreme security committee said.

According to a statement carried by Saba state news agency, the committee said 167 more were wounded in the brazen daylight assault, nine of them seriously.

A suicide bomber blew his explosives-packed car into Yemen's defense ministry Thursday, allowing gunmen to launch an assault on the complex.

Six doctors, including two German, one Venezuelan and two Filipino, and three Yemenis, along with five patients, including a judge, were among the dead, medical sources said.

They were at a hospital that lies within the ministry's complex, which bore the brunt of the attack.

"A car bomb driven by a suicide bomber forced its way into the western entrance of the ministry complex," a security official told AFP.
"It was followed by another car whose occupants opened fire at the complex of buildings," he said.

The attack comes as Defense Minister Mohammed Nasser is heading a military delegation on a visit to the United States.

The ministry said gunmen occupied the hospital after the explosion, but security forces had regained control of the building.

"The assailants took advantage of some construction work that is taking place to carry out this criminal act," it said without elaborating.
A security source said another apparently coordinated attack had been launched and a gunfight was raging outside the complex early afternoon.