Toll hits 177 in south Yemen battle with al-Qaeda

A battle between Al Qaeda militants and armed civilians for control of the town of Loder spread on Thursday to nearby Mudia, as the death toll from four days of clashes reached 177, local sources said. The armed men attacked a vehicle outside Mudia carrying Al Qaeda militants from nearby Shabwa province to Loder, the scene of fighting between Islamists and the army backed by armed civilians, the sources told AFP. ‘The militants traded machinegun fire’ with the armed civilians, who have formed ‘popular resistance committees,’ leaving one dead on each side, they said. Residents of Abyan province, mainly from Loder and Mudia, formed the armed groups in 2011 after Al Qaeda militants overran the provincial capital of Zinjibar. The Yemeni air force, meanwhile, raided Al Qaeda positions on the outskirts of Loder, which the militants have been trying to seize since they launched an assault on an army barracks in the town on Monday, residents said. The army also fired artillery shells at Al Qaeda positions on the outskirts of Loder on Thursday, residents said. And the Islamist insurgents fired mortar rounds at the town, wounding two children, members of the committee and residents said. ‘Al-Qaeda militants are shelling our town and targeting civilians,’ one tribesman said. ‘It is random, vengeful shelling.’ At least 51 people were killed Wednesday in a third day of clashes in and around Loder, raising to 175 the total death toll, with the Islamists making up more than 140 of the dead, according to military and tribal sources. Loder lies some 150 kilometres (95 miles) northeast of Zinjibar, the Abyan capital that militants of the Al Qaeda-linked Partisans of Sharia (Islamic law) overran last May. Al-Qaeda briefly seized Loder in August 2010 before being driven out by the army, while armed men from Assal tribe also drove the militants out of Mudia. A tribal source said the militants wanted to recapture it because of its strategic location between Shabwa, Bayda and Lahij provinces where Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, is also active. Abyan has fallen completely under the control of the terror network except for Loder and Mudia. The United States considers the Yemen-based AQAP to be the most deadly and active branch of the global terror network.