20 elite Republican Guards were killed in a truck explosion near the Yemeni presidential palace in Mukalla, capital of Hadramawt, only hours after new president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi took the oath as the country’s new president.

20 elite Republican Guards were killed in a truck explosion near the Yemeni presidential palace in Mukalla, capital of Hadramawt, only hours after new president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi took the oath as the country’s new president.

AFP quoted a military source as saying that “a pick-up truck driven by a suicide bomber exploded at the entrance of the presidential palace in Mukalla”.

The Yemeni Republican Guards are still under the command of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh's son Ahmad.

"The bodies of 20 soldiers were taken to the mortuary and there are many others wounded," AFP quoted a medic at the Ibn Sina hospital in Mukalla as saying.