Aden: Loyalist forces pushed Al Qaida out of parts of Aden on Wednesday in a new drive against the terrorists in Yemen’s second city where the internationally recognised government is based, military sources said.
Troops and militia retook the central prison and deployed on main roads across the Mansura residential district after a three-hour gun battle with the terrorists, the sources said.
There was no immediate word on casualties.
The extremists of Al Qaida have exploited conflict between the government and rebels who overran the capital Sana’a in September 2014 to expand their control in the south.
A Saudi-led coalition, which intervened in support of President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi when he fled into exile in March last year, concentrated its firepower on pushing the rebels and their allies out of Aden and neighbouring southern provinces, and the terrorists took advantage.
But in recent days, the coalition has carried out a series of air strikes against Al Qaida in cities it has seized including Hadramawt provincial capital of Al Mukalla and Abyan provincial capital of Zinjibar.
Five militants were killed and three wounded in Monday’s strikes on Al Mukalla, a major port city that the terrorists seized last April, provincial officials said.
Zinjibar residents said that Al Qaida fighters were vacating public buildings in the city on Tuesday in apparent fear of new strikes.
The coalition raids follow a US strike against an Al Qaida training camp outside Mukalla last week that killed 71 militants, according to provincial officials.
On Tuesday, hundreds of people took part in an Al Qaida-organised protest in Mukalla against the US raid, witnesses said.
“US raids will not defeat jihad,” banners carried by the demonstrators said.
But other residents resisted the terrorists’ efforts to get them to join the protest, the witnesses said.
There has been no let-up in the long-standing US air war against Al Qaida’s Yemen-based branch, which it regards as the terror network’s most dangerous.
US strikes have taken out a number of senior Al Qaida commanders in Yemen over the past year.
