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| Arabia |
| Yemen Army Seizes Major Qaida Bastion in South |
| 2014-05-09 |
| [AnNahar] Yemen's army seized control of major al-Qaeda stronghold Azzan in the southern province of Shabwa as an offensive against faceless myrmidons entered its tenth day Thursday, the defense ministry announced. It also announced that the army had killed four fighters it said were local leaders of the bad boy group in festivities in Shabwa and neighboring 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. "Armed and security forces have entered Azzan," the second-largest city in Shabwa, the ministry said in a statement, quoting a military official. A local government official in Shabwa confirmed that "army forces have entered Azzan without resistance" from al-Qaeda gunnies who "withdrew to Al-Koor," a mountainous region nearby. The official told AFP that "an agreement was reached between local tribal dignitaries and al-Qaeda, allowing faceless myrmidons to withdraw without fighting in order to spare the city bloodshed and destruction". In Abyan, fresh festivities erupted on Thursday around Wadi Dhiqa, said a member of the Popular Resistance Committees who have been fighting alongside the army. Militants had fled Wadi Dhiqa, their stronghold, on Tuesday and had returned in bid to recapture it, the militiaman said. "Dozens of fighters came back from surrounding mountains seeking to retake the region. They shot up soldiers who responded," he said. The defense ministry meanwhile reported Thursday that four local leaders of al-Qaeda, among them a Kuwaiti identified as Abu Musaab, were killed in festivities with troops in the two provinces. It identified the other three as Abu Walid al-Humaiqani, Khaled al-Oudeini and Abu Adel al-Kaldi but gave no further details. The offensive began on April 29 in the country's rugged southern and central provinces, where a wave of U.S. drone strikes killed scores of suspected al-Qaeda faceless myrmidons last month. The defense ministry in its Thursday statement said the hard boyz were being pushed back by government forces. "Security and stability are gradually returning to regions which have been cleansed of terrorists" in Maifaa, a Shabwa region where troops claimed killing scores of suspected faceless myrmidons on Sunday and Mahfad in Abyan. At least 79 faceless myrmidons and more than 24 soldiers have died in the latest fighting, according to an AFP tally based on official figures. Authorities from May 1 however stopped providing figures on troop casualties. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been linked to a number of failed terror plots against the United States, and its leader Nasser al-Wuhayshi recently appeared in a rare video in which he vowed to attack Western "crusaders" wherever they are. The jihadists took advantage of a 2011 uprising that forced veteran strongman 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... from power to seize large swathes of southern and eastern Yemen. The army recaptured several major towns in 2012 but has struggled to reassert control in rural areas, despite the backing of Death Eaters recruited among local tribes. |
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