Sunday, May 13, 2012

Dozens Killed in South Yemen Military Offensive

Dozens killed in south Yemen offensive

Mon May 14, 2012 1:46AM GMT
presstv.ir

Dozens of people have been killed in fighting between the Yemeni government forces and, what Sana’a calls, al-Qaeda militants in the southern Yemen province of Abyan.

On Sunday, the government forces bombarded several “al-Qaeda-held sites” and killed at least 20 people, Xinhua reported.

About 10 soldiers were also killed in the fighting.

The assault was being carried out with "US logistical support," a Yemeni military official said.

Meanwhile, John Brennan, US President Barack Obama's top counter-terrorism advisor, held talks in the Yemeni capital with the country’s new President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi.

Washington has stepped up its drone attacks in Yemen since Hadi took office in February.

On Saturday, at least 12 people were killed in two US assassination drone attacks in southern Yemen.

The first attack occurred near the border of Ma’rib and Shabwa provinces to the southeast of Sana'a.

In the second attack, unmanned US aircraft fired missiles at two vehicles traveling in Ma’rib.

Yemeni officials said all the people killed were members of the al-Qaeda terrorist group operating in Yemen.

The United States has come under fire for increasing its drone attacks in the Middle Eastern country.

And Human rights groups have urged Washington to come clean about one of the deadliest drone attacks, which happened in 2009.

The strike in the remote village of al-Majalah in the Abyan province took the lives of over 40 people, many of them women and children.

Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh formally stepped down and handed power over to Vice President Hadi on February 27. The power transfer occurred under a Saudi-backed deal brokered by the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council in April 2011 and signed by Saleh in Riyadh on November 23, 2011.

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