ADEN, July 30, (Agencies): At least 42 people have died in violence near Yemen’s southern city of Zinjibar, most of which has fallen under the control of suspected al-Qaeda militants, military and local sources said on Saturday.
Eleven people including top officers were killed in fierce clashes between the army and militants in Dofas, a village 15 kms (nine miles) south of Abyan’s provincial capital of Zinjibar, they said.
“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.
Medics at a military hospital in the southern port city of Aden confirmed the casualty toll.
A local official in Dofas said five members of the Islamist network were also killed and four wounded in the attack.

Meanwhile the official SABA news agency, quoting a security source, reported that troops on Friday arrested four suspected al-Qaeda members near Zinjibar, including local leader Saeed Omar Habiyate.
Also on Friday, an air raid and clashes with militants left 29 tribesmen killed and dozens wounded in eastern Zinjibar, tribal sources said, adding that several others went missing.
Twelve of the tribesmen were killed and 20 others wounded in clashes with the militants, a top security official in the area told AFP.
“Around 200 tribesmen came from the (coastal) village of Shaqra heading towards Zinjibar when they clashed with al-Qaeda elements” on the city’s outskirts, Abdullah Naser al-Jadani said.
Tribal sources said the militants forced the tribesmen into a government building seized by the network, prompting the army to launch an air raid.
Jadani said three tribesmen were “mistakenly” killed in the air strike while another nine were shot dead by al-Qaeda militants.
Later on Saturday, tribal sources said 17 other bodies were retrieved from the rubble of the building targeted by three air raids, accusing the army of having carried out a “massacre” which cost the lives of 29 tribesmen.

However, Jadani insisted that the raids targeted “al-Qaeda fighters and not civilians.”
A medic at a hospital in the town of Jaar, controlled by the militants, said two al-Qaeda militants were killed and 14 wounded in the clashes and air strikes.
Militants belonging to the “Partisans of Sharia” (Islamic law), which is suspected of links to al-Qaeda, seized control of much of Zinjibar in May. Thousands of residents have since been displaced by fighting.
Support
Deputy Information Minister Abdo al-Janadi said last week that the United States had provided logistical support to Yemen’s 25th Mechanised Brigade, which had been besieged by the militants in Zinjibar.
US commanders have repeatedly expressed concern that the jihadists have been taking advantage of a protracted power vacuum in Sanaa to expand their operations.
Since January, protesters have been demanding the ouster of veteran President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has been in hospital in Saudi Arabia since early June being treated for wounds sustained in a bomb blast at his palace.
Two Yemeni army colonels, five soldiers and seven Islamist militants died overnight in fighting in southern Yemen, while artillery and air raids killed 15 pro-government tribesmen by mistake, local and tribal officials said on Saturday.

The clashes flared outside Zinjibar, centre of the province of Abyan where militants have seized several areas, a local official told Reuters. The region abuts an international shipping lane where 3 million barrels of oil pass daily.
A colonel and five soldiers were killed in an ambush and seven militants died in clashes that followed. Another colonel was killed in a separate shootout, the local official said.
A tribal official said the army and air force targeted the tribesmen after mistaking them for militants as they approached Zinjibar in another location late on Friday, killing 15 of them.
The militants’ increasing threat to army control in south Yemen is kindling fear in the West and neighbouring Saudi Arabia that al-Qaeda’s Yemen wing is taking advantage of political turmoil and six months of anti-government protests.
The Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), released an audio recording by its military commander on an Islamist website on Friday in which he vowed to attack the Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter.
Opposition leaders have accused President Ali Abdullah Saleh of deliberately allowing Zinjibar and the other areas to fall to al-Qaeda-linked militants for the time being in an effort to show how chaotic Yemen would be without him.
On Friday, tens of thousands gathered for protests both for and against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s three-decade rule.