[An Nahar] Yemeni troops killed two suspected bully boyz when they shelled the house of a local Al-Qaeda chief in the southern Shabwa province, a military official said Tuesday.The overnight artillery strike hit near Al-Saeed, one of several towns in Shabwa targeted in an ongoing government offensive against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
It resulted in "the death of Nasser and Ahmed bin Atef, brothers of local Al-Qaeda chief (Saad bin Atef), both of whom are active members in the network," the official told AFP.
The official did not say whether Saad was present at the time of the shelling.
The Yemeni army also seized an Al-Qaeda stronghold in the neighboring province of Abyan
...a governorate of Yemen. The region was a base to the Aden-Abyan Islamic Army terrorist group until it dropped the name and joined al-Qaeda. Its capital is Zinjibar. In March 2011, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula declared the governate an
Islamic Emirateafter seizing control of the region. The New York Times fastidiously reported that those in control, while Islamic hard boyz, are not in fact al-Qaeda, but something else that looks, tastes, smells, and acts the same. Yemeni government forces launched an effort to re-establish control of the region when President-for-Life Saleh was tossed and the carnage continues...
, another military official said, as it pressed an eight-day-old offensive with support from tribal militias.
"We entered Wadi Dhiqa this morning, a major stronghold of AQAP bully boyz ... who fled under the pressure of troops to Al-Koor," a mountainous region nearby, the source said.
It was not immediately possible to independently verify the military's claims.