Yemen ambush death toll reaches nine

Al Qa'eda militants kill nine soldiers in an ambush on a military convoy in the southern province of Abyan.

ADEN // Al Qa’eda militants killed nine soldiers in an ambush on a military convoy in the restive southern province of Abyan on Friday, Yemeni officials said.

"We were hit today in an al Qa'eda ambush which resulted in the killing of five soldiers and two others being wounded," a security official who requested anonymity told AFP.

But another security official later revised the death toll to nine soldiers.

Loder health department chief Mostafa Ahmed confirmed to AFP that the bodies of five soldiers were taken into a hospital morgue. A civilian passer-by was wounded, he said.

And a medical official in Al-Bayda province, near Abyan, said the bodies of four other soldiers killed in the same ambush were taken to a hospital in his area.

The militants used rocket-propelled grenades and machine-guns in the attack in the town of Loder, the officials said, adding that two military vehicles were burned.

The army vehicles had been escorting a lorry carrying food supplies to military bases in the area. Two water tanks were also destroyed.

Abyan and adjacent Shabwa province have become major fields of operation for Al-Qaeda as the central government in Sanaa struggles to impose its control on the region's heavily armed tribes.