ADEN: Al Qaeda militants attacked a military convoy in south Yemen Friday, killing 10 soldiers and wounding three, a regional security official said. The army patrol cars carrying water supplies to a military camp were targeted in the city of Lawdar in the southern province of Abyan, where several military raids were carried out against suspected Al-Qaeda militants last year. In November, a day after the state kicked off a regional soccer cup, a roadside bomb in Lawdar killed one soldier and wounded two others riding in a military vehicle. Abyan's capital Zinjibar was hosting the 20th Gulf Cup along with the neighboring coastal province of Aden and the government had put in place heavy security, deploying tens of thousands of soldiers to prevent any violence. Yemen is trying to quell a resurgent wing of Al-Qaeda that has stepped up attacks on Western and regional targets in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state. Yemen, also trying to maintain a shaky truce with rebels in the north, is a focus of Western security concerns after two US-bound parcel bombs were intercepted in Britain and Dubai in October, a plot claimed by Al-Qaeda's Yemen-based regional wing. 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, officials said, adding that two military vehicles were burned. Abyan and adjacent Shabwa province have become major fields of operation for Al-Qaeda as the central government in Sana'a struggles to impose its control on the region's heavily armed tribes.
