Yemeni troops have recaptured a key port city from Al-Qaeda militants who controlled it for a year.
Yemeni troops have recaptured a key port city from Al-Qaeda militants who controlled it for a year, in what a Saudi-led coalition hailed Monday as a major victory that saw more than 800 jihadists killed.
The assault on the southeastern city of Mukalla, home to some 200,000 people, was part of a wider counter-offensive against the Sunni extremists launched by pro-government forces last month after a year in which they had focused their firepower on Shiite rebels who control the capital.
It comes as government and rebel delegations hold peace talks in Kuwait and after US President Barack Obama called for a negotiated settlement that would enable both sides to turn their attention on Al-Qaeda.
The jihadists’ Yemen-based branch, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is regarded by Washington as their most dangerous and the group’s militants have come under repeated US air and drone strikes in and around Mukalla.
The jihadists used the area as a base to plan attacks overseas, including a January 2015 attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that killed 11 people in Paris.
“We entered the city centre and were met by no resistance from Al-Qaeda militants who withdrew west,” a military officer told AFP by telephone from Mukalla.
The officer, who requested anonymity, said residents had appealed to the jihadists to spare the city the destruction of fighting and to withdraw.
– Qaeda car bombing –
Government troops were backed by special forces from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as coalition air strikes, commanders said in a statement published by the official Saudi Press Agency.
Loyalist forces also recaptured a swathe of the adjacent Arabian Sea coast, including the city of Shihr and its Mina al-Dhaba oil terminal as well as Mukalla’s Riyan airport.
“The operation resulted… in the deaths of more than 800 Al-Qaeda members and some of their leaders, while some others fled,” the coalition commanders said.
The death toll could not be independently confirmed and no indication was given of any civilian casualties.
Mukalla is one of a number of southern cities that Al-Qaeda had overrun since the Saudi-led coalition launched its military intervention in March last year when President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi fled into exile after the Iran-backed rebels seized much of the country.
The jihadists overran two other provincial capitals further west — Huta, which government forces recaptured last week, and Zinjibar which they entered late on Saturday, only to beat a tactical retreat.
An Al-Qaeda car bomb killed seven soldiers and wounded 14 as they were entering the city on Sunday triggering the pullback, military sources said.
“The withdrawal was decided following information that Al-Qaeda was preparing other car bomb attacks against our troops,” an officer in the province told AFP.
The counter-offensive against the jihadists has come as a fragile April 11 ceasefire between pro-government forces and the rebels firms up.
– US drone war –
Washington, which has provided reconnaissance and refuelling support for the coalition air campaign, had put mounting pressure on coalition leaders to call a halt and seek a negotiated settlement.
Obama joined a Gulf summit last week and Pentagon chief Ashton Carter also held talks with Gulf counterparts.
Obama aide Ben Rhodes urged the warring sides in Yemen to participate “constructively” in the peace talks which opened in Kuwait on Thursday, to “allow for a focus on AQAP in Yemen”.
Washington has been waging a drone war against AQAP since November 2002, when it killed the suspected mastermind of an October 2000 bombing of a US destroyer that killed 17 sailors in the southern port of Aden.
In April last year, a US air strike killed AQAP commander Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi, who claimed responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo attack in a video, outside the presidential palace in Mukalla where the jihadists had set up base.
Last month, an air strike on an AQAP training camp in Hajr, west of Mukalla, killed more than 70 jihadists, provincial officials said.
During its year-long rule in Mukalla, AQAP imposed its strict interpretation of sharia law forbidding consumption of the mild narcotic qat, which is a mainstay of Yemeni social life, and demolishing the tombs of revered Sufi mystics.
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