Warplanes pounded the al Qaeda-held port city of Mukalla on Sunday and killed 30 militants, residents said, as a Gulf Arab military coalition ramped up an offensive to wrest swathes of southern Yemen from the fighters’ grip. Government forces last week expelled militants of the jihadist network’s local branch – Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula – from Huta, the provincial capital of Lahj, as part of a widespread operation to secure southern provinces.
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“The operation resulted…in the death of more than 800 Al-Qaeda members and some of their leaders, while some others fled”, Arab coalition commanders said in a statement published by SPA, the official Saudi news agency.
Yemeni troops advanced into Mukalla, taking control of its maritime port and airport and setting up checkpoints throughout the southern coastal city.
Local officials said clerics and tribesmen had negotiated with the militants to get them to leave Mukalla peacefully and residents said their fighters were withdrawing westward to neighbouring Shabwa province.
Mukalla has been the centre of a rich mini-state that Al Qaeda built up over the past year as it took control of an nearly 600-km (370-mile) band of Arabian Sea coastline and pocketed customs revenues from the port.
Once faded into irrelevance, AQAP has gone from strength to strength in Yemen since Saudi Arabia began its ferocious military campaign against the impoverished neighbor. Twelve Al-Qaeda militants and three soldiers died in the fighting, a military official said.
The decision was also linked to a United States congressional motion to hold the Saudi ruling family accountable for potential roles in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it added.
The UN-brokered Yemen peace talks are continuing on the fourth day in Kuwait, but with government and Houthi rebel delegations far from reaching an agreement to end the conflict.
Pro-Hadi forces “retreated from Zinjibar after they entered on Saturday night” from the city’s southern gate, an officer in Abyan told AFP.
However, the troops pulled out of Zinjibar after a vehicle bomb killed seven government soldiers and wounded 14 on Sunday, and intelligence suggested more such attacks were imminent, according to military sources.
“The withdrawal was decided following information that al-Qaeda was preparing other car-bomb attacks against our troops”, AFP quoted a pro-Hadi officer as saying.
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The Houthis are demanding an immediate halt to air strikes that the Arab coalition has been carrying out since March past year in support of Hadi.
