Yemen battles between army, Islamists kill 48

ADEN (AFP) - Forty-eight people, including 30 soldiers and four civilians, were killed during fierce fighting Wednesday between the army and Qaeda-linked militants in south Yemen, the military and medics said. The battles raged around Al-Wahda stadium on the outskirts of Zinjibar, most of which has fallen into the grips of the Islamists a month ago. "A total of 30 soldiers and 14 Al-Qaeda militants" were killed in the confrontation, a military source said. According to the source the violence erupted when "dozens of gunmen attacked the stadium where troops from the 25th Mechanised Brigade were deployed." The gunmen took control of the stadium, prompting the "air force to go into action," and attack the Islamists, the source said. The military source said losing the stadium would have deprived the troops of a strategic location since weapons were airlifted by helicopter to the brigade stationed in the arena. An earlier toll said 16 soldiers, including a colonel, had been killed in the fighting while a medical official reported two militants dead. The four civilians died in a strike on their fleeing bus. They were travelling in a convoy of vehicles that had taken shelter near the stadium where the fighting was taking place when Yemeni forces launched an air strike, medics and witnesses said. Twelve other civilians were wounded. Wednesday's violence has raised the army death toll to 130 troops killed since the militants, who call themselves Partisans of Sharia (Islamic law), seized control of most of Zinjibar on May 29. The Sanaa government says they are allied with Al-Qaeda but the opposition accuses the government of playing up a jihadist threat in a desperate attempt to keep embattled President Ali Abdullah Saleh in power. The military source urged tribes in the Abyan province -- of which Zinjibar is the capital -- "to join in the fight against Al-Qaeda." On Tuesday, the militants held some 40 residents of Zinjibar whom they accused of "theft" and of "collaborating with the army," one of them told AFP after he was released along with several others. Fear has mounted of a spillover of the violence to the strategic port of Aden where an officer was killed on Tuesday evening when his car was booby-trapped, a police officer said. "Colonel Khaled al-Habishi, commander of a battalion of the army's 31st Brigade, was killed by a bomb planted on his car," the officer said, asking not be identified. He was the second officer to be killed in Aden in a fortnight. A colonel was killed in a similar bombing on June 13. Yemen's official Saba news agency reported on Monday that the security services had thwarted an Al-Qaeda plot to attack vital installations in Aden and had arrested six suspects. The country is the home of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, an affiliate of the global network accused of anti-US plots, including an attempt to blow up a US-bound aircraft on Christmas Day 2009. President Saleh had been a key US ally the US "war on terror" but has faced mass protests against his rule since January. He is currently receiving treatment in Saudi Arabia for blast wounds he sustained in bomb attack inside the presidential palace. Protesters have been camped out in the capital Sanaa demanding the formation of an interim ruling council to prevent his return to power.