Al-Qaeda’s last southern stronghold falls to Yemeni army

Jubilant residents took to the streets to celebrate the rout of the Islamists from the port town of Shaqra, the third significant base to fall in less than a week, witnesses said.

Military officials said the army was now massing troops outside the town of Azzan in neighbouring Shabwa province – the militants’ last major bastion across the whole of the south, apart from a number of small settlements.

The Islamist militants seized territory during a power vacuum last year as mass protests weakened the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s grip on power and took Yemen to the brink of civil war. The loss of Shaqra, on top of defeats at Zinjibar and Jaar on Tuesday, ended al-Qaeda’s reign in Abyan, during which it governed huge swathes of the province according to strict Islamic sharia rules.

“[The recapture of towns in Abyan] is highly significant because this has been a troublesome province for the past year,” said Theodore Karasik, the director of research and development at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis in Dubai. “The question now is whether they can hold to the province because al-Qaeda has this nasty capability to spring back.”

At least 31 militants were killed during the fighting to retake Shaqra. “The army is now in the town centre, there are no militants in the town any more,” an official said, shortly after the recapture of Shaqra. In Shabwa, military officials said the army killed at least 53 militants near Azzan. At least 23 Islamist fighters were killed during overnight clashes near gas facilities in Belhaf in Shabwa province, a military source said.

Military planes bombed a convoy of vehicles carrying militants fleeing Shaqra, killing about 30 Islamists, said a second.

Tribal sources said a number of chiefs from Shabwa were attempting to persuade the Islamist militants to surrender without a struggle.