Yemen retakes southern town

Soldiers regained control of a besieged southern town from Al-Qaeda, Yemeni authorities said on Saturday, as militants staged a dawn attack on a bus in the capital, wounding 10 intelligence agents.

"Security forces backed by army units succeeded on Friday to clear out the city of Huta where Al-Qaeda terrorist elements were holed up" since September 18, an interior ministry spokesman said.

Forces were now pursuing "terrorist elements who fled to the mountains surrounding the city," he added, the official Saba news agency reported.

The military's reported advances in the south were followed by a setback in Sanaa, however, when two unidentified gunmen ambushed a bus taking intelligence agents to work at dawn on Saturday.

The attackers fired automatic weapons at the bus before fleeing, security services said, adding that they were probably militants of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.

A medical official said two of the wounded were in a serious condition.

Four suspects thought to have been involved in the attack were detained during a wave of arrests in Sanaa later on Saturday, a security official told AFP.
On Wednesday, Yemeni troops had said they were preparing to mount an offensive against militants entrenched in Huta and nearby mountains.

The siege of the Shabwa provincial town had already sparked a mass exodus of civilians, with between 8,000 and 12,000 of its 20,000 residents fleeing by Tuesday, the Yemeni Red Crescent said.

Displaced residents began returning on Saturday.

"I'm just outside the city," said Saleh Aram, who was hoping to return home with his wife and six children.

"But we are very afraid," he added, describing the military presence in Huta as "unprecedented."

Seven people were killed in the Huta clashes - three suspected Al-Qaeda militants, three soldiers and a tribal leader - local officials said.

Twenty-eight Al-Qaeda suspects were also arrested in the town, Shabwa security chief Ahmed al-Maqdashi said on Wednesday.

A Yemeni security official had earlier said Al-Qaeda fighters were stopping people from leaving with a view to using them as human shields.

"I'm surprised at official statements that the fighters have fled to the mountains and to unknown destinations. How did they flee?" if Huta was under siege, one tribal chief who asked not to be identified told AFP on Saturday.

Huta is one of two Yemeni towns to have been attacked by suspected Al-Qaeda militants in the past month.

In late August, government forces and alleged Al-Qaeda members fought a pitched battle in the town of Loder in neighbouring Abyan province that killed at least 33 people, including 19 militants.

Also on Saturday a soldier was killed and a senior officer wounded when security forces clashed with fleeing gunmen who stole the equivalent of 930,000 dollars in a post office raid in the southern Lahij province.

A security official accused "extremist jihadi groups" of involvement.

Britain warned on Friday of "massive dangers" to world security should Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country and increasingly an Al-Qaeda stronghold, become a failed state.

The situation was described as "a very potent cocktail for danger" by Britain's international development minister Alan Duncan, speaking in New York at the latest meeting of international support group the Friends of Yemen.

Sanaa has intensified its operations against Al-Qaeda since AQAP claimed responsibility for a botched attack on US-bound airliner on Christmas Day last year.

Yemen, which is also battling a sporadic Shiite rebellion in the north, is the ancestral homeland of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and has seen repeated attacks by his jihadist network.

The formerly independent south has also witnessed growing discontent with the Sanaa government spearheaded by a coalition of secessionist and autonomist groups dubbed the
Southern Movement, which denies any connection with Al-Qaeda.

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