Yemen Army Kills 2 Suspected Al-Qaida Militants

Yemeni troops killed two suspected militants when they shelled the house of a local Al-Qaida chief in the southern Shabwa province, a military official said Tuesday.

The overnight artillery strike hit near Al-Saeed, one of several towns in Shabwa targeted in an ongoing government offensive against Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

It resulted in "the death of Nasser and Ahmed bin Atef, brothers of local Al-Qaida chief (Saad bin Atef), both of whom are active members in the network," the official told AFP.

The official did not say whether Saad was present at the time of the shelling.

The Yemeni army also seized an Al-Qaida stronghold in the neighboring province of Abyan, another military official said, as it pressed an eight-day-old offensive with support from tribal militias.

"We entered Wadi Dhiqa this morning, a major stronghold of AQAP militants ... who fled under the pressure of troops to Al-Koor," a mountainous region nearby, the source said.

It was not immediately possible to independently verify the military's claims.

The army killed 40 suspected Al-Qaida members on Sunday, mostly in Shabwa and the central province of Baida, according to the defense ministry.

State news agency Saba on Monday published the names of six Saudis among the killed militants.

So far, 72 militants and more than 24 soldiers have been killed in the military's latest operations, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.

AQAP took advantage of the 2011 uprising that forced veteran strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh from power to seize swathes of southern and eastern Yemen.

The army recaptured several major towns in 2012 but has struggled to reassert control over some rural areas, despite the backing of militiamen recruited from local tribes.

The latest government campaign came after a wave of air raids and U.S. drone strikes on Al-Qaida bases and training camps last month that killed around 70 militants.

The jihadist group denounced the offensive as a "premeditated military escalation" that came after "the Yemeni defense minister visited Washington to receive the orders of his American masters".