Qaeda kills 16 Yemeni pro-government fighters
![Qaeda kills 16 Yemeni pro-government fighters Qaeda kills 16 Yemeni pro-government fighters](https://citizentv.obs.af-south-1.myhuaweicloud.com/131687/conversions/qaeda-og_image.webp)
Yemen's Southern Transitional Council is a separatist group allied with the government [NABIL HASAN/AFP/Getty-file photo]
A bomb attack on Friday in southern Yemen killed at least 16
pro-government fighters, a military official said, in one of the deadliest
operations claimed by Al-Qaeda jihadists in months.
An explosive-laden vehicle targeted a site of the Southern
Transitional Council (STC), a separatist group allied with the government, said
STC spokesperson Mohammed al-Naqib.
The attack at the barracks in Abyan province killed at least
16 fighters and wounded 18 others, Naqib said, blaming Al-Qaeda which claimed
the operation.
The death toll was expected to climb due to the severity of
the injuries, Naqib told AFP.
Al-Qaeda in a statement said a bomber detonated a
vehicle-borne improvised explosive device at the military post, according to
the US-based SITE Intelligence Group.
Yemen is a hotbed for jihadists such as Al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), considered by the United States to be the Sunni
extremist group's most dangerous offshoot.
AQAP frequently attacks both Yemeni security forces and
Western targets.
It has claimed numerous high-profile attacks in the United
States and Europe -- including the 2015 assault on Charlie Hebdo magazine in
France's capital that killed 12 people -- although these have declined in
recent years.
In Yemen, Al-Qaeda jihadists attacked separatist troops in
March in the country's south, killing two.
In August 2023, a bombing blamed on the group also in
southern Yemen killed four STC fighters. Another Al-Qaeda attack that
month killed five STC fighters.
Almost a year earlier, 21 separatist fighters were
killed in an Al-Qaeda attack on Abyan in September 2022.
In March this year, AQAP announced that Saad al-Awlaki, a
Yemeni national wanted by the United States, had taken the helm of the
organisation after the death of its former leader, Khalid Batarfi, following a
long illness.
Long on the front line of the war against Al-Qaeda, Yemen
erupted into conflict in 2014 when Iran-backed Huthi rebels seized the capital
Sanaa.
A Saudi-led military coalition intervened the following
year on the side of the country's internationally recognised government.
Born in 2009 from the merger of Al-Qaeda's Yemeni and Saudi
factions, AQAP grew and developed in the chaos of the war.
But it is now just one of many armed movements in southern
Yemen, including the Islamic State jihadist group and UAE-trained separatist
militias that back the internationally recognised government against the
Huthis.
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