Sanaa: At least four Al Qaeda fighters were killed when the Yemeni armed forces shelled their vehicle in Yemen’s southeastern province of Shabwa Friday, a government official said.
“The army troops struck a pick-up truck carrying suspected Al Qaeda gunmen in Habban region in Shabwa, killing at least four terrorists and injuring two others,” Xinhua quoted the official as saying on condition of anonymity.
Yemen’s state-run Saba News Agency reported that the armed forces launched a pre-emptive attack against an Al Qaeda-held position in a rugged area in Shabwa, leaving several militants killed or injured.
Arms caches and several Al Qaeda vehicles were destroyed, Saba said, adding that “a search of the area uncovered several hideouts for the manufacture of explosives, including car bombs and suicide vests”.
On Wednesday, the police managed to defuse two vehicle-born improvised explosive devices in Shabwa province, according to a security official.
Shabwa is the ancestral homeland of Anwar al-Awlaki, a US- born Islamist cleric who was accused of having links to the attempted bombings of a Detroit-bound airliner in 2009 and US cargo planes in 2010. Al-Awlaki was killed in a CIA-led drone strike in Yemen in 2011.
The Yemeni military and security forces, with support from the US, have recently intensified operations against suspected Al Qaeda strongholds throughout the country, killing many non-Yemeni Al Qaeda suspects.
Last week, the Yemeni military authorities announced that a total of 500 militants of the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and 40 soldiers were killed in large-scale military operations against the terrorist group’s key bastions in southern regions in May.