20 Yemeni southern separatists killed in al-Qaeda attack in Abyan

Southern separatist forces say al-Qaeda kills 20 of its fighters, including that six attackers had been additionally killed in gunfight.

Al-Qaeda fighters have killed not less than 20 fighters aligned with Yemen’s southern separatists in an assault within the Abyan province, a southern army spokesman has stated, including that every one attackers had been killed.

The armed group fighters used rocket-propelled grenades, mild and medium weapons and army automobiles within the ambush on a safety checkpoint in Ahwar district, Mohammed al-Naqib, the spokesman for Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces, advised the Reuters information company on Tuesday.

Yemen’s primary southern separatist group STC, which is backed by the United Arab Emirates, final month expanded its presence all through the southern Abyan province in what it described as a transfer to fight “terrorist organisations”, singling out al-Qaeda.

In a sequence of tweets, the STC-dominated Safety Belt stated six al-Qaeda fighters had been killed after the group launched a “terrorist assault” on its forces within the Ahwar district in Abyan early on Tuesday.

It added that Yasser Nasser Shaye, a commander belonging to the Safety Belt’s “Anti-Terror Brigade”, was killed within the assault together with “numerous his companions”.

A number of members who had been manning the safety checkpoint had been additionally injured, the Safety Belt stated.

Yemen-based al-Qaeda within the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has used the battle between a Saudi-led coalition and the Iran-aligned Houthis to reinforce its affect.

AQAP has survived an intensive marketing campaign during the last 10 years from the US army, the coalition and the Houthis, making the most of Yemen’s mayhem, tribal sympathies and huge and empty swathes of south Yemen.

The Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 after the Houthis eliminated the internationally recognised authorities from the capital, Sanaa. The Houthis are de facto authorities within the north whereas the Saudi-backed authorities relies within the south.

Underlining Yemen’s parlous safety state of affairs, on Saturday AQAP launched a video exhibiting a United Nations employee who was kidnapped greater than six months in the past, the SITE Intelligence Group reported.

5 UN workers members had been kidnapped in Abyan in February whereas returning to the port metropolis of Aden after a subject mission, UN spokeswoman Eri Kaneko advised the AFP information company on the time.

In Saturday’s video message, apparently recorded on August 9, Akam Sofyol Anam, the director of the UN Workplace of Safety and Security in Yemen, urges “the UN, the worldwide neighborhood, the humanitarian organisations, to please come ahead… and meet the calls for of my captors”, with out outlining the calls for.

Yemen’s UN-brokered ceasefire has drastically decreased combating for the reason that truce started in April, however outbreaks of violence proceed.

Final week, 10 Yemeni troopers had been killed in a Houthi assault close to Taiz, the nation’s third-biggest metropolis which has been blockaded by the rebels since 2015.

The assault, which additionally left a number of troopers wounded, was aimed toward chopping off a key path to the southwestern metropolis of about two million, the federal government stated.