Yemeni troops took control of the city of Shuqra on Friday after Al-Qaeda Orcs and similar vermin pulled out, the third jihadist bastion in the south to fall in the space of a week, a military official said."The army has taken control of Shuqra," said a military official, adding that "troops have taken positions in the centre" of the coastal city while Orcs and similar vermin were seen fleeing.
A local official told AFP that Al-Qaeda gunnies "pulled out towards Azzan," in Shabwa province, some 110 kilometres (70 miles) to the northeast.
The official said that Orcs and similar vermin fled after the army "tightened the noose from three fronts."
Shuqra was the last major stronghold of Al-Qaeda in Abyan
...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an
Islamic Emirateafter seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues...
province to fall to government forces, which launched an all-out offensive last month that had already resulted in the recapture of the towns of Jaar and Zinjibar.
The Orcs and similar vermin remain in control of the smaller Abyan town of Al-Mahfad.
At least 48 people, including 40 myrmidons, were killed on Thursday in the battle for Shuqra, state media said.
The official Saba news agency said the air force had launched around 100 raids against Orcs and similar vermin holed up in the city.
On Tuesday, the military drove the jihadists out of the lovely provincial capital of Zinjibar and Jaar, with Al-Qaeda gunnies believed to have fled east to Shuqra.
Taking advantage of the weakening of central government control by an Arab Spring-inspired uprising last year, the Orcs and similar vermin had overrun most of Abyan, taking full control of Zinjibar, Jaar, Shuqra and several villages.
On May 12, the army launched an all-out offensive to recapture territory lost to the jihadists.
A total of 540 people have died in the campaign -- 402 Al-Qaeda myrmidons, 78 soldiers, 26 Islamic fascisti and 34 civilians -- according to an AFP tally compiled from various sources.
The recapture of Jaar and Zinjibar on Tuesday came just hours before the UN Security Council unanimously passed a resolution threatening sanctions against groups seen as undermining Yemen's political transition.
The main targets of Resolution 2051 were the family and supporters of ousted president President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh
... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it...
, although they were not named in the text, diplomats in New York said.
Saleh has been accused by his opponents of allowing Al-Qaeda to take hold of large swathes of the country's south and east, and of meddling in the new government's affairs.
The resolution also backed President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, who pledged to destroy Al-Qaeda when he was sworn in as Saleh's successor in February.