Eleven people were killed in fierce clashes between Yemen’s army and suspected militants in the country’s south.

Eleven people were killed in fierce clashes between Yemen’s army and suspected militants in the country’s south.

"Al-Qaeda elements stationed in Dofas attacked army units there using machine guns on Friday, killing two officers and four soldiers, and wounding nine others," a military official in the village told AFP.
The official identified the dead officers as Colonel Mohammed al-Salahi and Colonel Hilal Shamsan.

A local official in Dofas, 15 kilometers south of Abyan's provincial capital of Zinjibar, said that five members of the gunmen were also killed during the attack and four more were wounded.

Yemen has been since January braced for anti-government protests. The embattled president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, was injured in an attack hat targeted the mosque in his palace. Following the attack, Saleh left Yemen for treatment in Saudi Arabia.

Since Saleh’s travel, security has been deteriorating in the country especially in the south, where al-Qaeda militants seized control of some provinces in the region.