Eleven people including top officers have been killed in fierce clashes between Yemen’s army and militants in the country’s restive south, military and local officials said on Saturday.
“Militants stationed in Dofas (Abyan province) attacked army units there using machine guns on Friday, killing two officers and four soldiers, and wounding nine others,” a military official in the village told AFP.
The official identified the dead officers as Colonel Mohammed al-Salahi and Colonel Hilal Shamsan.
Medics at a military hospital in the strategic southern port city of Aden confirmed the toll.
A local official in Dofas, 15 kilometres (nine miles) south of Abyan’s provincial capital of Zinjibar, said that five members of the militants were also killed during the attack and four more were wounded.
