Sana'a Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh has called on Yemenis to join forces to fight terror admitting that increasing Al Qaida attacks are his government's biggest challenge.
Saleh said that by targeting security forces Al Qaida is trying to repeat its Afghanistan and Iraq strategy in Yemen.
"Now these terrorists are targeting the security forces in the same way as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they will not succeed," he stated. "The drug traders here come from terrorist groups and the politicians, who are members of the terrorist Al Qaida organisation, allow them to make drug deals, exporting drugs from Afghanistan all over the world."
Speaking at a gathering of scholars and Quran students in Sana'a's Al Saleh grand mosque on Saturday, Saleh said: "These terrorists have nothing to do with Islam and its tolerant values, so we all must fight them. They fight Allah, religion, the nation and development."
Meanwhile, Yemeni military officials on Sunday rejected reports that foreign troops are involved in fighting terrorists.
"We are surprised at groundless allegations in several media reports lately on the presence of British soldiers and on the arrival of US forces to aid the fight against terror in Yemen," the defence ministry's website quoted a Yemeni official as saying.
The official said that Yemen's cooperation with the "US or other countries" in fighting terrorism is "restricted to the exchange of information which facilitates its hunt [for] terrorist elements and handing them over to justice."
Hours earlier, Al Qaida gunmen struck a security patrol in the southern city of Ja'ar, killing eight soldiers and setting their bodies on fire, Deputy Governor Ahmad Galib Al Rawi said on Sunday.
