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YEMEN: Fierce fighting pitted the regular army, Al Qaeda and tribes

Fighting involving the Yemeni army, alleged members of Al Qaeda and members of tribes were 42 dead and dozens wounded Friday in southern Yemen, officials said Saturday from local, and tribal members.

A Dofas, "elements of Al Qaeda" with automatic weapons attacked Friday a military unit, killing two colonels and four soldiers and wounding nine others, said a military official told AFP in this village located 15 km south of Zinjibar, the capital of the province of Abyan.

Zinjibar is for two months at the hands of insurgents linked to al Qaeda.

Doctors at the military hospital in Aden, the main town in southern Yemen, confirmed this assessment, while a local official in Dofas said five members of Al Qaeda were killed and four injured in these fighting.

In a suburb east of Zinjibar, fighting has 200 members of a tribe from the coastal village of Shaqra to "elements of al Qaeda," he told AFP Abdullah Nasser al-Jadan, a high responsible for security in the region, adding that 12 tribesmen were killed and 20 wounded.

According to tribal sources, the al-Qaeda fighters have forced tribal members to take refuge in public buildings under their control.Three members of the tribe were killed in an air raid of the army against the building, others were killed by the Islamists.

The bodies of 17 other tribal members were taken Saturday at midday from the rubble of the building public Friday was the target of three raids of the army, told AFP a tribal source, citing "a massacre perpetrated by the army. "

Mr.Jadan admitted that the victims were killed "by mistake", adding that the army was covered by its raids against the building "the al-Qaeda fighters, not civilians."

A medical source at the hospital in the neighboring town of Jaar, controlled by the Islamists, said the fighting had left two dead and 14 wounded in their ranks.

May 29, hundreds of armed men affiliated to the "Supporters of Sharia (Islamic law)", a group suspected of having links with Al-Qaeda had taken control of Zinjibar, pushing its population to the exodus terrorized.

But the army, with the support of tribes far more favorable to Al-Qaeda and logistical support of the United States, began to gain ground.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), formed by an amalgamation of Yemeni and Saudi branches of Al Qaeda in January 2009, is active in southern and eastern Yemen, where attacks against security forces it regularly assigned