7 militants, 2 soldiers dead in south Yemen

A general view of the southern Yemeni town of Zinjibar in 2010 Seven militants and two soldiers were killed on Sunday in clashes after an attack on an army base in south Yemen's Zinjibar, a stronghold of Al-Qaeda, local officials and the military said. "Two soldiers were killed and seven others were wounded" when militants attacked the camp of the 25th Mechanised Brigade in the city, a military source said.
The brigade has been attacked repeatedly since armed militants calling themselves "Partisans of Sharia" (Islamic Law) seized control of Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province, on May 29.
Yemen's air force launched raids against the headquarters of the regional administration and military sites that are in the hands of insurgents, the same source said, adding there were "casualties in the ranks of the enemy."
A local official said six gunmen were killed.
"The bodies of six armed men were buried in a cemetery north of the town," he said, citing witnesses.
A medical source in Jaar, a village near Zinjibar, told AFP that two wounded fighters were hospitalised and that one died of his injuries while the other was in critical condition.
At least 100 soldiers have been killed since the violence in Zinjibar erupted more than three weeks ago, and 260 have been wounded, a military source said earlier this week.
Officials say the militants are connected to Al-Qaeda.
But opponents of the country's embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh -- currently hospitalised in Saudi Arabia -- accuse his government of exaggerating a jihadist threat to ease Western pressure on his 33-year rule.
Yemen is the home of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), an affiliate of the slain Osama bin Laden's militant network accused of anti-US plots, including an attempt to blow up a US-bound aircraft on Christmas Day 2009.
Saleh, a key US ally in the fight against AQAP, was wounded in a bomb blast at his palace mosque earlier this month and remains hospitalised in Saudi Arabia.
Leon Panetta, head of the US Central Intelligence Agency, said during a June 9 senate hearing that Yemen's turmoil has not halted cooperation with the United States in the battle against extremists.
"While obviously it's a scary and uncertain situation, with regards to counter-terrorism we're still very much continuing our operations," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The number of air strikes, carried out mainly by drones, has stepped up in recent weeks, the New York Times reported earlier this month.
Saleh had approved the use of the strikes in 2009, publicly declaring that they were being carried out by the Yemeni air force.