suspected Al-Qaeda militant killed two Yemeni soldiers in the southern city of Zinjibar on Monday, an army officer said, after four troops were killed in an ambush near the Qaeda-held city.
Witnesses said that aircraft were carrying out strikes on suspected Al-Qaeda positions to the east of the city.The two soldiers from the 25th mechanised brigade, the headquarters of which is under siege in Zinjibar, were killed by a rocket-propelled grenade, the officer said. Earlier, a security official said four Yemeni soldiers had been killed in an ambush by suspected Al-Qaeda fighters.
“A convoy of reinforcements fell in an ambush by Al-Qaeda elements one kilometre (less than a mile) from Zinjibar. Four soldiers, including a colonel, were killed and a number of others were wounded,” the official said. A medical source said that seven soldiers wounded in the attack had been admitted to the Jumhuriya hospital in the main southern city of Aden. Four suspected Al-Qaeda fighters were killed in overnight fighting with soldiers in Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province, another security source said. But a source close to the gunmen who have taken control of much of the city said that only two were killed. A leading tribal dignitary in Zinjibar, Tareq al-Fadhli, told AFP by telephone the situation there was “catastrophic,” with “corpses littering the streets, water and electricity cut off, and hospitals no longer functioning.” Many residents have fled, he said.
He added that “the gunmen claim to be part of the “Partisans of Sharia” (Islamic law), which may be a coalition of armed groups,” said Fadhli, a former jihadist, adding they carried white banners bearing the same name. He estimated their number at about 1,000, adding they are primarily from the area of Jaar, a town not far north of Zinjibar. “Today, there was fighting between the gunmen and the soldiers of the 25th mechanised brigade, and shells have hit houses,” Fadhli said, adding that there was aerial bombardment as well. The defence ministry’s 26sep.net, meanwhile, said the gunmen were believed to belong to Al-Qaeda, and that 10 had been captured.“Afghans and Egyptians were among the assailants,” 26sep.net said, adding that 96 boxes of rockets destined for the gunmen had been intercepted near Zinjibar. On Sunday, dissident army commanders accused veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh of surrendering Abyan province to “terrorists.”
