[An Nahar] Clashes between armed civilians and al-Qaeda bully boyz trying to retake control of the town of Loder spread on Friday to nearby Mudia, as the corpse count from four days of festivities reached 200, local sources said.At least 23 people, 20 of them suspected bully boys, were killed in one suburb of the southern town, tribal sources said.
The rest of the dead were tribal levies allied with government troops who were killed in the jihadist assault on the Abyan province town, the sources said.
Residents of the province, mainly from Loder and Mudia, formed gangs in 2011 after al-Qaeda bully boyz overran the picturesque provincial capital of Zinjibar.
At least 51 people were killed on Wednesday in a third day of festivities in and around Loder, according to military and tribal sources.
Loder lies some 150 kilometers (95 miles) northeast of Zinjibar, the Abyan capital that bully boyz of the al-Qaeda-linked Partisans of Sharia (Islamic law) overran last May.
Al-Qaeda briefly seized Loder in August 2010 before being driven out by the army, while gunnies from the Assal tribe also ejected the bully boyz from Mudia.
A tribal source said the bully boyz wanted to recapture it because of its strategic location between Shabwa, Bayda and Lahij provinces where Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, is also active.
Abyan has fallen completely under the control of the terror network except for Loder and Mudia.