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SANA, January 13th (New York Times) — Yemeni security forces killed a man suspected of leading an al Qaeda cell and captured four other militants Wednesday morning, hours after two soldiers were killed by Qaeda members in a neighboring district, Yemeni officials said.
The clashes were the latest episode in the Yemeni government’s heightened campaign against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a terrorist organization once based in Saudi Arabia and run by a Saudi, and now based in Yemen and run by a Yemeni.
Raids have grown more frequent and have drawn on increased help from the United States, which declared the regional Qaeda affiliate a global threat after it claimed credit for the failed effort on Christmas Day to blow up an airliner approaching Detroit.
Yemen’s Interior Ministry identified the dead militant as Abdullah al-Mehdar, one of the country’s most wanted militants. He was killed after Yemeni commandos broke into the barricaded house where he was holed up with fellow militants in the city of Houtah, according to a statement posted on the Interior Ministry’s Web site. Houtah is in Shabwa Province, one of several remote areas where Qaeda militants have taken refuge in recent years.
The developments signaled a concerted push by the Saudi and Yemeni governments to try to end an ongoing conflict that has flared into all-out war since the summer. The conflict between Yemen and the Houthi rebels, named after the clan of their leader, has also spilled over the border into Saudi Arabia, prompting Saudi forces to begin their own offensive on Nov. 4 to push the rebels back.
In announcing that Saudi forces had managed to “cleanse” the border village, Al Jabri, of the Houthi rebels who had occupied it, Prince Khaled said that 82 Saudi soldiers had been killed since the kingdom moved against the rebels, who it says crossed into Saudi territory, The Associated Press reported.
At the same time, Yemeni officials said they had killed 20 rebels and arrested 25 in the fighting at Sadah.
The conflict, which has simmered for years, has intensified since August. The Houthis, a Shiite rebel group, gained control of sections of Sadah Province, a remote, mountainous area in the north, of which the city Sadah is the capital.
The Houthis said in an Internet posting that the military had used bulldozers to level houses and force the rebels into the open, according news agency reports.
On Monday, Yemen’s deputy interior minister, Muhammad al Qawthi, said the Yemeni military was starting a focused operation intended to finish off the Houthi rebels, though that prospect seemed unlikely anytime soon.
