SANAA: Suspected Al-Qaeda gunmen launched simultaneous attacks Wednesday on the intelligence and security services headquarters in the south Yemen town of Zinjibar killing three policeman and wounding 11, a security official said.
Two gunmen were killed and one wounded in the clashes, the official added.
He said that around 20 gunmen carried out the attacks, and that Al-Qaeda was believed to be responsible.
Witnesses said gunmen on motorbikes armed with rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles and grenades began attacking the two headquarters at around 8:00 am (0500) GMT.
After a fierce gun battle, the attackers fled toward Jaar, north of Zinjibar, witnesses said.
Two policemen were killed at the security services headquarters and a third at the intelligence headquarters, the security official said, adding that police have one dead attacker’s body while the surviving gunmen took the other.
"It seems Al-Qaeda was behind the attacks," the official told AFP.
An interior ministry spokesman confirmed in a statement that two of the attackers were killed. He also announced the arrest of seven Al-Qaeda suspects in Abyan, but it was not immediately clear whether they had been involved in the latest attacks.
Security forces cordoned off the sites of the attacks and closed the main streets of the Abyan province town for over an hour, witnesses said.
The clashes follow another recent attack by an assailant on a motorbike in Zinjibar.
On July 2, the defense ministry’s 26sep.net news website reported that a gunman on a motorbike killed a Yemeni intelligence officer in Zinjibar.
Authorities said the attack was carried out by Al-Qaeda.
Zinjibar is located about 25 kilometers (15 miles) northeast of Aden, where 11 people, including seven security forces members, were killed in a June 19 attack on the intelligence headquarters there. That attack has been claimed by Al-Qaeda.
The Yemeni defense ministry said on Sunday that eight Al-Qaeda members had been captured in the south since the June attack.
Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, has witnessed numerous attacks claimed by Al-Qaeda on foreign missions, tourist sites and oil installations.
Sanaa has intensified operations against Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in the wake of the attempted December 24 bombing of a US airliner by a Nigerian believed to have been trained and supplied by the group.
AQAP has suffered setbacks amid US pressure on the government to crack down. But its presence threatens to turn Yemen into a base for training and plotting attacks, a senior US counter-terrorism official said in September.
In addition to the threat from Al-Qaeda, Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, must also contend with the aftermath of a long-running Zaidi Shia rebellion in the north and a separatist movement in the south.
South Yemen, where many residents complain of discrimination by the Sanaa government in the allocation of resources, is the site of frequent protests and periodic unrest.
The impoverished country’s south was independent from 1967 until 1990 when it united with the north.
The south seceded in 1994, sparking a short-lived conflict that ended when the south was overrun by northern troops.
