Sana'a (dpa)- At least 15 insurgents, suspected of links with al-Qaeda, were killed Sunday in fierce clashes with the army in southern Yemen, reported local media. The fighting raged in the northern and eastern parts of Zinjibar, the capital of the volatile southern province of Abyan, said the Yemeni website Mareb Press, citing local witnesses. There were no immediate reports about casualties among the army troops. Al-Qaeda radicals were seen setting up concrete blocks at the entrances of Zinjibar for fear of fresh attacks by the army, according to the report. Yemen's new President Abd Rabu Mansour Hadi vowed Saturday in his inaugural address to fight al-Qaeda, calling this a “religious and national duty.” Hours after Hadi was sworn into office on Saturday in the capital Sana'a, a car bomb exploded outside a presidential complex in the southern city of Mukalla, killing at least 26 people. Elsewhere on Sunday, at least two people were killed in fighting between army soldiers and insurgents in the central Yemeni town of Rada'a. The fighting started when a unit from the elite Republican Guards arrived in Rada'a, some 150 kilometres south-east of the capital Sana'a, to arrest a man suspected of stealing a soldier's gun, Mareb Press reported. The insurgents and soldiers exchanged fire, injuring four people, said the sources. The two deaths were a soldier and the suspected thief of the gun, they added. A battalion of armed radicals with links to al-Qaeda last month seized Rada'a before releasing it following tribal mediation. Militants – believed to be affiliated to al-Qaeda – have taken advantage of a year of political turmoil in Yemen to expand their influence in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country. The opposition has accused former president Ali Abdullah Saleh of manipulating the threat of extremists to seek support from the West and extend his stay in power, despite months of protests against him. Saleh eventually stepped down under a United Nations-sponsored power transfer deal, which he signed in November. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/QthU4 Tags: Al Qaeda, Attacks, Violence, Yemen Section: Latest News, Yemen
