ADEN: Seven Al-Qaeda members were killed in clashes on Sunday with the Yemeni army in the south of the country after an ultimatum for the militants to surrender expired, the defence ministry said.
"Seven members of Al-Qaeda were killed during clashes with the security forces," in the city of Loder in Abyan province, the ministry said in a statement on its Internet website 26sep.net.
It cited Abyan security chief General Abdel Razak Maruni as saying other Al-Qaeda militants had taken refuge in houses in Loder and that they had been surrounded.
Earlier, a local official had said five Al-Qaeda militants were killed, three in a raid on the house of one of the group`s leaders and two more who were preparing to fire a rocket-propelled at the city`s security services HQ.
The latest violence erupted at 5:00 pm (1400 GMT), two hours after a government ultimatum for suspected Al-Qaeda militants in Loder to surrender expired and two days after 21 people were killed in fighting in the city.
Earlier a local official told AFP the authorities had issued an ultimatum to the militants to surrender by 3:00 pm (noon GMT) on Sunday.
"If the wanted militants do not leave the city`s streets and neighbourhoods and hand themselves over to the authorities then we will carry out another raid until the area is free from Qaeda elements and their allies," he said.
Loder in Abyan province has been rocked by deadly violence for several days.
On Friday clashes between the army and suspected Al-Qaeda militants left 21 people dead, including 11 soldiers, the interior ministry said.
Seven alleged Al-Qaeda members, among them three foreigners, were killed on Friday and three others were wounded, the 26Sep.net website reported on Saturday. Three civilians were also killed.
Meanwhile a witness told AFP on Sunday that the army had sent reinforcements to Loder, and a tribal leader said civilians were fleeing the city in droves.
"The army has sent large reinforcements since Saturday night, which were deployed at the entrances of Loder in anticipation of an assault," the witness told AFP.
Civilians fled after the army distributed leaflets on Sunday urging residents to "evacuate the city amid fears of a raid on houses suspected as being hideouts for Al-Qaeda," the tribal leader said.
Defence Minister General Mohammed Nasser was in Loder to supervise operations, the tribal official said.
The defence ministry identified one militant killed on Friday as Adham Shibani, and named others who had fled as Ahmed Mohammed Abdu Daradish, Abdel Rauf Abdullah Mohammed Nassib and Jalal Saleh Mohammed Saidi.
It added that the wounded militants were being interrogated.
South Yemen, and Abyan province in particular, is feared to have become a base for Al-Qaeda militants to regroup under the network`s local franchise Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
Largely tribal Yemen is the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden.
BDST: 0925 HRS, August 23, 2010
