8 Al-Qaida Militants Killed in Southern Yemen

May 3, 2012

The Yemeni army killed at least eight al-Qaida militants in a battle in the southern province of Abyan on Thursday, the defense ministry said.

The 39th Armored Army Brigade repulsed an armed attack by al- Qaida terrorist group in Bajdar neighborhood near Abyan's provincial capital Zinjibar, killing at least eight terrorists and injuring several others, the ministry reported in a brief statement posted on its website.

"The army troops managed to foil an al-Qaida attack against a military post positioned on the outskirts of Zinjibar," the statement said.

Meanwhile, a tribal chief told Xinhua anonymously that 12 al- Qaida militants were killed on Thursday evening in clashes with tribal fighters near the Lauder town in Abyan.

Hundreds of soldiers and insurgents have been killed since last month in Lauder and Mudiyah towns in Abyan during ongoing battles between the Yemeni army and al-Qaida militants.

Taking advantage of the one-year-long political conflicts in Yemen, resurgent Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), locally known as Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law), has taken control of several cities and swathes of land across the restive southern provinces.

The AQAP, mainly entrenching itself in Yemen's southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa, is on the terrorist list of the United States, which considers it as an increasing threat to its national security.