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| Arabia |
| Yemen Troops Killed in Attack on 'Qaeda Militants' |
| 2011-10-02 |
| [An Nahar] Five Yemeni soldiers were killed on Saturday in an attack on the southern city of Zinjibar during an operation aimed at rooting out gun-hung tough guys linked to Al-Qaeda, a medical source said. The fighting comes a day after one of the beturbanned goon group's top leaders in the Arabian Peninsula country, U.S.-born holy man Anwar al-Awlaqi, was killed in an apparent U.S. drone strike. "Five soldiers were killed and another three were maimed in festivities in the Bajdar district of Zinjibar," the medical source told Agence La Belle France Presse. Residents confirmed there had been shooting in the area. On Friday, a military official reported one soldier had been killed and six presumed Al-Qaeda gunnies maimed in a firefight in the Kud area south of Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province. The military official also said five gun-hung tough guys were killed in an air raid on the same day. Hundreds of gun-hung tough guys from the Al-Qaeda linked Partisans of Sharia (Islamic law) group overran Zinjibar in May, and the city and adjacent towns have since been the scene of bitter fighting with the army. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has taken advantage of nearly nine months of sweeping unrest against President President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower... to bolster its presence in the restive south and east Yemen, launching regular attacks. On Friday -- the same day Awlaqi was killed -- AQAP issued a new claim of responsibility for deadly attacks. In a statement received by AFP in the main southern Yemeni city Aden, the group said it was behind a series of attacks in the south, but made no mention of Awlaqi's death in an air strike east of Sanaa. AQAP said it had killed 130 Yemeni troops in an attack on a garrison in Zinjibar, east of Aden, on September 14. It said it had killed two Yemeni soldiers in an attack on September 11 and 10 in another the following day. |
| Posted by:Fred |