Dubai: Yemeni troops, backed by the United States and the United Arab Emirates, conducted several raids against the local affiliate of Al Qaida in Shabwa province on Thursday, the Emirati state news agency WAM said.
“Since early morning on Thursday, Yemeni troops and Hadrami (from Hadramout province) Elite Forces, with US and UAE backing, moved to smash elements of the terrorist organisations, especially AQAP,” WAM reported.
WAM did not say what kind of support the UAE and US militaries had provided or give details on the outcome of the raids.
Air strikes by US drones and manned aircraft against the militant group are frequent. But large-scale ground operations by regional troops have been rare since 2015, when the group was driven out of the mini-state it had established in the port city of Mukalla.
Shabwa, one of the key southern Yemeni provinces, is where the US military carried out an air strike in June that killed Abu Khattab Al Awlaqi, one of the leaders of AQAP, along with two other militants.
It is also the site of Yemen’s only gas terminal, in the province’s port of Belhaf port, and the pipeline feeding the terminal has been targeted several times by AQAP, Al Qaida’s most active branch. The terminal stopped operating after foreign experts were evacuated from the facility in 2015.
Operations against the militants are complicated by the Yemeni civil war. A Saudi-led Arab coalition is fighting Al Houthi rebels backed by Iran and troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in a campaign to restore the internationally recognised government of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi.
Hadi came to power in early 2012 after massive Arab Spring protests ousted former president Ali Abdullah Saleh who ruled Yemen for more than 30 years.
He was forced to decamp to the city of Aden after escaping Al Houthi-imposed house arrest after the rebels took over the government in a coup in 2014.
Since then, Hadi shifted government headquarters to Aden from where he has led an offensive to liberate Al Houthi-occupied territories.
Al Qaida, which has taken advantage of power vacuum during the war against the Iran-backed Al Houthi rebels, suffered a major blow last year when thousands of UAE trained forces expelled them from main cities in the south including Al Mukalla, Al Houta and some districts in the port city of Aden. The forces are largely stalemated, but the fighting has plunged millions into poverty, displaced millions of others and killed more than 10,000 people.
