article_snippet: the group's momentum may have stalled in Syria and Iraq, but the group supporters from the Atlantic to the Hindu Kush appear to be heeding the group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's call to "erupt volcanoes of jihad.
article_snippet: By far the most surprising development was the group claim of responsibility for the twin suicide bomb blasts that killed over 130 in Houthi-Shia mosques in Sanaa, Yemen, on Friday and another attack in the north.
article_snippet: This indicates ISIS has very quickly built up an operational capability inside Yemen in the months since jihadis inside Yemen released an audiotape declaring allegiance to Baghdadi last November.
article_snippet: Only two developments could explain this: defections from AQAP or the return home of Yemeni ISIS veterans skilled in urban warfare and explosives.
article_snippet: Since Baghdadi declared ISIS had expanded into Yemen late last year there has been an escalating war of words between the two groups, with ISIS claiming AQAP was not doing enough to target Houthis and AQAP declaring that the ISIS caliphate was illegitimate.
article_snippet: In recent months the group has reaped a recruitment windfall from Sunni tribal anger over the Houthi takeover of Sanaa, allowing the group to expand the group operations across Yemen.
article_snippet: In targeting the Houthi mosques in Sanaa, ISIS would be quite deliberately repeating the sectarian strategy of ISIS founder, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who launched a devastating suicide bombing on Golden Mosque in Samarra in February 2006, which plunged Iraq into a full-blown sectarian civil war.
article_snippet: Al-Zarqawi correctly calculated that the Shia, infuriated by the attack on their most sacred shrines, would violently retaliate, driving Sunnis into the embrace of the jihadis.  
article_snippet: Yemen appears now to be on the brink of a similar civil war.
highlights_snippet: ISIS supporters appear to be heeding ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's call to "erupt volcanoes of jihad" 