At least 32 people have been killed in an attack on a military parade by Yemen’s rebel Houthi movement.

The parade in the southern port city of Aden was targeted by missiles and an armed drone, a Houthi-run TV channel says.

Aden is the seat of Yemen’s internationally recognised government.

The rebels say the military parade was part of preparations by pro-government forces for a fresh assault on Houthi-held territory just north of the city.

But the government said it was a graduation ceremony for newly recruited soldiers.

Bodies were strewn on the ground after the attack and soldiers were seen crying, one witness told Reuters news agency. A senior commander is believed to have been killed.

“The blast occurred behind the stand where the ceremony was taking place,” the witness said. “A group of soldiers were crying over a body believed to be of [a] commander.”

The international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says dozens of people were wounded.

The military camp where the attack took place belongs to a pro-government force known as the Security Belt.

Earlier on Thursday, a suicide bombing at a police station in Aden killed at least three officers. It is not clear if this incident was linked to the attack on the military camp.

Yemen has been devastated by a conflict that escalated in March 2015, when the Houthi rebels seized control of much of the west of the country and forced President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to flee abroad.

Alarmed by the rise of a group they believed to be backed militarily by regional Shia Muslim power Iran, Saudi Arabia and eight other mostly Sunni Muslim Arab states began an air campaign aimed at restoring Mr Hadi’s government.

The coalition received logistical and intelligence support from the US, UK and France.

Estimates of those killed range from 10,000 to more than 70,000, the vast majority being Yemenis and an estimated two-thirds of those from Saudi-led air strikes.

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