Identified earlier as Salah Ali Abdullah Al-Damani, the alleged Al-Qaeda leader was arrested on Thursday in Lawder, the Defense Ministry news website had said earlier. The ministry statement said the raid took place on Saturday night in Abyan province in the town of Lawder, 250 km southeast of the capital where government troops have for weeks been battling what it describes as Al-Qaeda elements.
The statement added that further raids are planned in the area.
Yemeni authorities arrested nine people, including a suspected local Al-Qaeda leader implicated in armed attacks in the south of the country, the 26sep.net website said.
Seven other people were detained in the Lawder area on Wednesday and Thursday.
Elsewhere, six people including four policemen were killed in overnight clashes in Yemen’s tense south, where a separate Al-Qaeda-style ambush killed a tribal chief and his two bodyguards, local and tribal officials said.
Clashes between the military and separatists continued throughout the night, said officials.
Four policemen and two militants were killed as fighting between Yemen’s security forces and separatists intensified late Saturday in Habilayn in the southern province of Lahij, medics and local officials said.
The violence broke out at dawn after security forces put up a checkpoint outside Habilayn, leading to a showdown between Yemen’s army and militants from the Southern Movement, according to a local official. “The situation is tense in Habilayn and government forces had to withdraw the reinforcements dispatched to the area,” said residents on Sunday.
Separately, a chief from the Al-Fadl tribe, Sheikh Hussein Saleh Mashdal, was killed in an overnight ambush along with his two bodyguards in Abyan, another southern province, a security official said.
The official blamed the attack on Al-Qaeda.
Mashdal was “leading the mediation between the authorities and alleged Al-Qaeda militants” in the city of Lawder, one of his relatives said.
Fierce clashes in Lawder between suspected Al-Qaeda militants and the army last month left at least 33 dead.
The south was once a separate country and simmering tensions there have compounded Yemen’s troubles as it struggles with a resurgent Al-Qaeda movement.
