Yemeni forces have launched an operation to drive Al-Qaeda fighters out of southern towns, where blistering air strikes killed nearly 60 militants last week, military officials said on Tuesday.

Yemeni forces have launched an operation to drive Al-Qaeda fighters out of southern towns, where blistering air strikes killed nearly 60 militants last week, military officials said on Tuesday.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula extremists established strongholds in towns and rugged zones in Abyan and Shabwa provinces after security forces chased them from major cities in Abyan in 2012.

Army troops backed by local militiamen had moved in to "purge" the Abyan towns of Ahwar and Al-Mahfad, and Azzan, Al-Houta, Al-Rawda and Al-Saeed in Shabwa province, a military official told AFP.

"The campaign will not stop until these areas are purged of Al-Qaeda militants," added the official, who was speaking on condition of anonymity.

Government forces clashed Tuesday with Islamist militants in the Lahmar area, which overlooks Al-Mahfad, a military commander said.

Other confrontations took place near Al-Saeed as militants took on advancing government forces, other military sources said.

Hussein al-Wuhayshi, a leader of the Popular Committees armed groups that had fought in the past alongside government forces, said his forces were taking part in the attack.

"There is an official decision to uproot Al-Qaeda from Abyan and Shabwa," Wuhayshi told AFP.

National Security chief Ali al-Ahmadi said the Supreme Security Committee had decided to "eradicate all forms of security problems" that flared during the year-long uprising that forced president Ali Abdullah Saleh to quit in February 2012.

"This strategic aim shall not be abandoned until security and stability are restored," the general told a security meeting in Ataq, quoted by Yemen's official Saba news agency.

AQAP took advantage of the weakening of the central government in Sanaa after the nationwide uprising, establishing strongholds in the southern and eastern regions.