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March 13, 2012 AFP
SANAA - Five al Qaeda militants
were killed in an air strike on their car in Yemen’s Bayda province on Tuesday
after deadly unrest there, and with the air force blasting jihadist positions
in nearby Abyan, security officials said.
“A fighter jet raided a car
carrying five al Qaeda militants,” said the official. “All five were killed.”
A tribal chief confirmed the raid,
which came hours after another security official said three policemen were
killed in a suicide attack in Bayda early on Tuesday. “Three policemen were
killed and six others were wounded in a suicide attack on a checkpoint in
Suwadeya,” the official said, referring to a village in Bayda, in Yemen’s
south.
After the attack, carried out with
a bomb-laden vehicle, clashes broke out between extremists and security forces
in which the province’s Al Qaeda chief, Naser al-Dhafri, and another militant
were killed, the source said.
He accused Dhafri of being the
“mastermind” behind Tuesday’s attack.
The official, requesting anonymity,
said the Qaeda militants killed in the raid were on their way to support those
locked in clashes with the police, adding that extremists managed to capture
two policemen during the fighting.
A military official said the
Yemeni air force also carried out strikes on Tuesday targeting Al Qaeda
positions, including a suspected training camp, in neighbouring Abyan province,
where an attack on an army camp last week killed 185 soldiers.
“Yemeni air forces launched six
raids on Tuesday against Al Qaeda posts in Jaar,” an Al Qaeda stronghold in
Abyan, said the official, also speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Three raids targeted an Al Qaeda
weapons hideout and a training camp west of Jaar,” and three targeted other Al
Qaeda positions southwest of the town, he added. No casualties were immediately
reported. Residents there, contacted by AFP, confirmed the raids but could not
say if they were carried out by US drones or Yemeni air forces.
On Sunday, three extremists were
killed when US drones fired missiles targeting their weapons hideouts in a hill
overlooking Jaar, with another six killed in artillery fire by the Yemeni army
on one of their positions southeast of Jaar.
Tuesday’s violence follows a
string of bloody attacks by the jihadist network against security forces that
have rocked Yemen since former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled the
country for 33 years, stepped down last month. And it comes just hours after
the interior ministry issued a statement warning of “a terrorist plot by Al
Qaeda to target vital installations and government facilities in several
provinces.”
“The Al Qaeda network is planning
to carry out terrorist operations using bomb-laden vehicles,” it said.
The ministry is committed to
“dealing with this threat... (and) will continue its war on terror.” In an
address to the nation after being sworn in to succeed Saleh on February 25,
President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi vowed to fight against Al Qaeda and restore
security across the impoverished nation, ancestral homeland of slain jihadist leader
Osama bin Laden
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