ADEN: Twenty-one separatist fighters and six members of Al Qaeda’s Yemen branch were killed on Tuesday as an attack by the jihadists punctured months of relative peace in the war-torn country, government and security sources said.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula(AQAP) attacked positions held by the UAE-trained Security Belt group in Abyan fiefdom in Yemen’s south, the sources said.
The violence came just days after the jihadist group released a videotape of a United Nations worker whom it kidnapped in the same fiefdom further than six months agone.
About three hours of fighting “left 21 dead among the(Security Belt), including an officer, and six among the Al Qaeda combatants”, a government functionary said on condition of obscurity. Two security sources verified the death risk.
Yemen has been gripped by conflict since Iran- backed Houthi revolutionists took control of the capital Sanaa in 2014, driving a Saudi- led military intervention in support of the beleaguered government in the ensuing time.
AQAP and zealots pious to the militant Islamic State group have thrived in the chaos.
The Security Belt, an important southern Yemen separatist force, has played a decisive part in the fight against the jihadists, forcing them to retreat from municipalities into pastoral areas.
Tuesday’s fighting comes as the Houthis and forces supporting the ousted government observe a shaky ceasefire in the times-long civil war.
Riven by divisions, the groups opposing the Houthis, who appear from the north, include southern secessionists who support there-establishment of South Yemen.
The country was divided into North and South Yemen until reunification in 1990.
Abducted UN worker
italicizing Yemen’s serious security, on Saturday AQAP released a videotape showing a United Nations worker who was kidnapped further than six months agone, the SITE Intelligence Group reported.
Five UN staff members were abducted in Abyan in February while returning to the harborage megacity of Aden after a field charge, UN prophet Eri Kaneko said at the time.
In Saturday’s videotape communication, supposedly recorded on Aug 9, Akam Sofyol Anam urges “the UN, the transnational community, the philanthropic organizations, to please come forward. and meet the demands of my convicts”, without outlining the demands.
Formed in a junction of Al Qaeda’s Yemen and Saudi branches, AQAP has carried out attacks on both revolutionary and government targets in Yemen as well as non-natives.
It has been indicted of conniving attacks beyond the Middle East and its leaders have been targeted by a US drone war for further than two decades, although the number of strikes has dropped off in recent times.
Yemen’s UN-brokered ceasefire has drastically reduced fighting since the armistice began in April, but outbreaks of violence continue.
