ADEN, Yemen — The bodies of three soldiers including an officer killed in a Qaeda-style ambush in south Yemen were recovered on Friday, raising the death toll in the attack to five, a security official said.“We recovered the bodies of three soldiers on Friday morning and identified the officer after we found his rank (on his ID card) in the pocket of his shirt,” the official said.
A medical source from a state hospital in the southern port city of Aden confirmed the bodies of three dead soldiers were brought into the morgue “at midday on Friday including that of an officer with the rank of major.”
This raises to five the death toll from the ambush of a military convoy in Abyan province on Thursday.
“Explosives, machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades were used in the ambush” the official said, blaming Al-Qaeda for the attack.
“Al-Qaeda has returned to Loder,” he said, refering to the town where clashes killed 33 people in August, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.
Three other people including a top policeman, an official from YemenÂ’s ruling party, and a soldier were also killed in two other incidents in Abyan on Thursday.
MudiaÂ’s police chief Abdullah al-Baham was shot dead during clashes between armed demonstrators and security forces trying to disperse them, said a security official who blamed a coalition of autonomist and pro-independence groups dubbed the Southern Movement.
The movement denied its supporters were involved and blamed Al-Qaeda.