Aden: Gunmen in Yemen killed 20 soldiers and wounded six on Monday when they attacked a checkpoint in Hadramawt province in the southeast, military sources said, with one blaming Al Qaida.
“Twenty soldiers were killed in the armed attack on an army checkpoint” near Reida, 135 kilometres east of the provincial capital Mukalla in the south, Saba said.
Security sources earlier put the toll at eight dead and six wounded, with one source saying the assault bore all the hallmarks of Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
One source said the assault was carried out by gunmen aboard several vehicles.
“The attackers would appear to be in Al Qaida,” he said.
Yemen has seen regular attacks on its security forces, usually blamed on AQAP, which remains active in the south and east despite several military campaigns to crush it.
On March 18, a suspected Al Qaida suicide car bombing at a military intelligence headquarters killed one person and wounded 13.
The attacker detonated the car outside the gate to the security building in Tuban, 15 kilometres north of Aden, killing a guard.
That attack came two days after three suspected Al Qaida militants, one a Saudi, were killed in the southern province of Shabwa when a car bomb they were preparing apparently detonated accidentally.
Yemen is the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden and the home base of AQAP, which Washington views as the jihadist network’s most dangerous franchise.
The US launches regular drone attacks in support of Sana’a’s campaign against Al Qaida and has killed dozens of militants in a sharply intensified campaign over the past year.
A tribal source on March 21 said a drone strike killed a local Al Qaida chief and his bodyguard in the northeast.
The unmanned plane fired a missile at a vehicle transporting militants in the Jebel Jame area of Jawf province, the source said.
The US military operates all drones flying over Yemen.
The drone strikes have triggered criticism from rights activists, who say they have killed many innocent civilians.
The United Nations said 16 civilians were killed and at least 10 wounded when two separate wedding processions were targeted in December.
The victims had been mistakenly identified as members of Al Qaida, the UN quoted local security officials as saying at the time.
Following the deaths, Yemen’s parliament voted for a ban on drone strikes, but analysts say lawmakers have limited powers and are unlikely to have an impact on Washington’s campaign.
The US says drones are an essential part of its “war on terror”.
The militants executed one of their own earlier this month after accusing him of spying for the US.
He was executed by firing squad and his body was displayed at a football stadium near Shehr in Hadramawt province, a security official said.
AQAP took advantage of the weakening of the central government in Sanaa after a popular uprising that began in 2011 forced president Ali Abdullah Saleh from power early the following year.
