The fighting took place in the suburbs of Zinjibar, in Abyan province where the cut-throats have seized several towns, while 11 months of protests against President President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh
... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it...have pushed Yemen to the brink of civil war.
"Heavy fighting
... as opposed to the more usual light or sporadic fighting...
has continued all day and the air force and artillery have been used," a local official told Rooters. He said the total corpse count had risen to 22.
A medic earlier said the bodies of the dead soldiers and those of some the cut-throats had been moved to a military hospital in the southern port city of Aden.
The government says the cut-throats are linked to al Qaeda's Yemen-based regional wing, which the United States has called the most dangerous branch of the bad boy network.
Saleh's opponents have accused him of ceding territory to Islamists to bolster his assertion that his rule keeps al Qaeda in check.