At least two al-Qaida members were killed in an ongoing fierce gunfight with soldiers of Yemeni armed forces in the turbulent southern province of Abyan on Saturday, a security official told Xinhua.
The gunfight broke out after contingents of army troops came under heavy fire from al-Qaida militants in the coastal town of Shakra, while cordoning a desert area on specific intelligence inputs suggesting presence of terrorists, the local security official said on condition of anonymity.
"A group of the al-Qaida militants were engaged in gunfight with army troops on the outskirts of Shakra town... two terrorists were killed in the region," the security official said.
"The army troops carried out the operations on prior intelligence information about the presence of terrorists in Shakra and other different mountainous areas in Abyan," he added.
In a separate incident, gunmen blew up a roadside bomb nearby the house of a military officer in neighboring southern province of Lahj, but he survived the attack unharmed, a police source told Xinhua anonymously.
Hours later, unknown gunmen riding two motorcycles launched an armed attack against a local police station, injuring at least two policemen, he said.
A string of high-level assassinations and suicide bombings struck Yemen's southern regions over the past two months, showing that al-Qaida militants have retained the capacity to attack despite that Yemen's military operations claimed victory in routing them out of their strongholds in the south.
On June 20, Yemen's military officials announced the seizing of al-Qaida's last bastion in the country's troubled south following the army's offensive backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia.
However, local military and anti-terrorism experts said that the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch is still a major threat to the impoverished Arab country despite being driven out from its main southern bastions by the U.S.-backed military assault.