Fierce clashes between the Yemeni army and Al-Qaeda in the country’s restive south killed at least 12 militants and nine soldiers on Sunday, medics and officials said. “The hospital has received the bodies of six soldiers,” said a medic at Bashib hospital in the southern city of Aden, after military officials said an Al-Qaeda bid to overrun an army post in Kud, in Abyan province, sparked a firefight. Six wounded soldiers were also brought to the military facility. A military official, who said the army held onto Kud, confirmed the toll. But “there are other casualties among the army who have not been taken out of the area,” he added. A local official in Kud told AFP that Al-Qaeda gunmen had taken away the bodies of three other soldiers they had killed. Another local official in Jaar, a nearby extremist stronghold, said 12 Al-Qaeda militants died in the firefight. Thirty soldiers, 10 of them wounded, were captured, he added. Another army official said the militants also seized heavy weapons before pulling back to Zinjibar, accusing some army leaders who had served under former president Ali Abdullah Saleh of “collaborating” with Al-Qaeda.
