Yemeni air forces on Saturday night carried out two airstrikes against al-Qaida sites in the southeastern province of Shabwa, causing no casualties, a security official said, Xinhua reported.
"The Yemeni warplanes started pounding suspected al-Qaida positions in the Asaed district, 40 kilometres southwest of Ataq, the provincial capital of Shabwa, from 9:00 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Saturday night for one hour," the local security official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.
The warplanes also raided a suspected training camp of the al- Qaida terrorist group in the region, the official said, without giving further details about casualties.
The al-Qaida militants in the targeted sites were preparing to carry out armed attacks against Shabwa's provincial capital, the official added.
A sources close to the al-Qaida wing told Xinhua anonymously that "unmanned U.S. drones struck some of our sites in Shabwa, but nobody was killed in the air bombing."
The air strikes came jut one day after two suicide bombers riding a laden-explosives motorbike blew themselves up outside the headquarters of the military intelligence agency in the southern port city of Aden, killing themselves only at the scene.
Yemen has experienced a surge of violence in southern and eastern provinces, where the resurgent al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has been intensifying attacks on the government institutions and the troops, exploiting security vacuum resulted from the army splits due to prolonged protest.
Local observers fear that security situation in southern and eastern provinces, home to the country's oil and gas stockpiles, may worsen as the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch expands its control over the chaos-ridden areas, despite the government' efforts to reunite the army to intensify battles against the AQAP.