Things heated up this weekend in Yemen when al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula jihadis attacked a convoy of Yemeni tanks killing four soldiers - the Yemeni response was to send in air strikes with the report later that three al Qaeda were killed in the strikes.
The report from Reuters via Breitbart details a number of clashes and assassination attempts all showing that just about the time you think Yemen is calming down a little bit, it breaks wide open again.
The report from Reuters via Breitbart details a number of clashes and assassination attempts all showing that just about the time you think Yemen is calming down a little bit, it breaks wide open again.
Yemeni planes bomb al Qaeda in south after ambush
(Reuters) - Yemeni aircraft bombed al Qaeda positions in southern Yemen on Sunday, a government official said, after militants ambushed a tank column, killing four soldiers.
Three suspected members of al Qaeda's regional wing were also killed in the clashes on Sunday in the Mudiyah district in Abyan province on the Arabian Sea coast, where the army has battled militants in recent months, the official told Reuters.
One man was killed and two women and a child were injured in the air raid, a local official and residents told Reuters.
On Saturday, a car bomb wounded a senior intelligence officer and his assistant in Abyan, a security source said, and a government website said two militants died in a botched suicide attack with a car on a security patrol in Mudiyah.
Mudiyah's police chief was killed in a suspected al Qaeda attack last week and the provincial governor survived an assassination attempt.
In fighting elsewhere in Abyan on Sunday, an artillery strike by the army killed one person and injured three of his relatives, an opposition news website said. The report could not be independently verified.
Yemen is trying to quell a resurgent branch of al Qaeda that has increased attacks on Western and regional targets in the Arabian Peninsula state, next to oil giant Saudi Arabia.
It is also trying to cement a truce with Shi'ite rebels to end a civil war in the north that has raged on and off since 2004, and to end a separatist rebellion in the south.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), an arm of al Qaeda thought to be include Yemenis and Saudis, has stepped up attacks on Yemeni and Western targets since it claimed a failed U.S. airliner bombing in December.
The government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been under pressure since then to go after al Qaeda more vigorously, with U.S. help.
Occasional suspected American missile strikes to back the crackdown have sometimes killed civilians as well as militants. Yemen denies U.S. forces are directly involved in the campaign.
France urged spouses and children of its citizens last week to leave following a rocket attack targeting a British diplomat in Sanaa and the death of a Frenchman after a security guard at a site of Austrian oil and gas firm OMV opened fire.
Yemen's Interior Minister Muttahar al-Masri has been quoted by local media as saying the guard had links with al Qaeda.
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