SANAA: Al-Qaeda militants in an off-road vehicle attacked a foreign-run oilfield in Yemen sparking clashes in which six soldiers and three jihadists, one of them a top commander died, officials said Monday.
"Three Al-Qaeda members, one of them a top leader, were killed" in the exchanges with troops guarding the oilfield in Shabwa province, east of the capital, on Sunday, a security official told AFP.
The attackers opened fire with machine guns and rockets at the soldiers who were posted near the foreign oil company’s operations, a provincial official said.
The militants struck in Al-Aqla district, 45 kilometers (30 miles) east of the provincial capital Ataq.
The area produces between 10,000 and 15,000 barrels of crude a day, provincial official Abdel Mohsen Ben Saad told AFP.
A security official identified the suspected Al-Qaeda commander as Zayed Al-Daghari, believed to have been a key figure in the jihadists’ operations in Shabwa.
Provincial security chief General Ahmed Al-Maqdashi told the defense ministry’s 26sep.net news website that the militants who carried out Sunday’s attacks were believed to have been behind a night-time ambush which killed five soldiers and wounded one in Ataq on Thursday.
Shabwa and adjacent Abyan province have become major fields of operations for Al-Qaeda as the central government struggles to impose its control on the region’s heavily armed tribes.
The province is the base of the Al-Awalaq tribe of radical Yemeni American preacher Anwa Al-Awlaqi, who is wanted by both US and Yemeni authorities.
Awlaqi has been accused of ties to Al-Qaeda’s Yemeni branch.
The ancestral homeland of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Yemen has seen repeated attacks claimed by the jihadists on foreign missions, tourist sites and oil facilities.
On Friday, Al-Qaeda claimed twin attacks on security and intelligence headquarters in the south Yemen town of Zinjibar on July 14 in which three policemen were killed, in an Internet statement.
The group’s Yemen branch, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), said that the attack was to avenge the deaths of the "emir of the mujahedeen" in Abyan province, Jamil Al-Ambari, and fellow jihadist Samir Al-Sanaani.
The two were among three Al-Qaeda fighters Yemeni officials said were killed in an air raid in Abyan’s Moudia district on March 14.
The Sanaa government has intensified its operations against Al-Qaeda since the network’s local affiliate claimed the attempted bombing of a US-bound airliner on Christmas Day last year.
