A car bombing of a Shia religious procession has killed 15 people in the northern Yemen, reports say.

报道称，也门北部地区一只什叶派宗教游行队伍遭到汽车炸弹袭击，15人死亡。

A spokesman for the area's Huthi rebels said his group was targeted in the attack, in al-Jawf province.

It is not clear who carried out the attack, which took place during al-Shadeer, a festival not recognised by Yemen's majority Sunni Muslims.

Yemen's weak central government faces rebels in the north and south as well as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

A rebel spokesman told AFP news agency that 30 people were also wounded in the suspected suicide bombing.

There has been speculation¹ that al-Qaeda or another Sunni Muslim group may have carried out the attack, says the BBC's Middle East correspondent Jon Leyne.

But the situation in Yemen, and northern Yemen in particular, is troubled and complicated, he says.

Disputes between the rebels and the government, and between different tribes, are as important as the religious divide between Shia and Sunni Muslims, our correspondent adds.