Yemeni security forces man a checkpoint in the capital Sanaa on April 9, 2012 Yemeni army officials have said that heavy clashes overnight between the military and al-Qaeda-linked militants in the south have killed 63 people, bringing the two-day death toll in the fighting to 127. Fighting that broke out in the town of Lawder early Monday spilled over into Tuesday, with the army shelling militant hideouts in an effort to prevent them from sending reinforcements.
The officials said 56 militants, four soldiers and three tribal fighters were killed overnight and early Tuesday.
At least 60 people were killed on Monday when Al-Qaeda militants raided a barracks, the latest in a spate of attacks by the extremist network which has boosted its presence in Yemen\'s lawless south and east.
A military source said the army lost 14 men, including an officer, while six other people were also killed in the violence.
The barracks in Loder came under fire from the Islamists before daylight and the soldiers fought back, military sources said.
A government official in Loder told AFP that the army later withdrew from the barracks where the town’s tribesmen, who have been fighting alongside the soldiers, were left to battle the militants.
“The army is backing us with weapons,” a tribal chief said. “We will fight al-Qaeda and will not let them into our city.”
The attack Monday came after air strikes killed 24 suspected al-Qaeda militants in their strongholds of southern and eastern Yemen at the weekend, according to the defence ministry and a tribal chief.
The city of Loder is located some 150 kilometres (95 miles) northeast of Zinjibar, the Abyan provincial capital which the \"Ansar al-Sharia\" (Partisans of Sharia) overran in May last year.
The Partisans of Sharia is linked to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, which the United States considers to be the most active branch of the global terror network.
AQAP has exploited a decline in central government control that accompanied Arab Spring-inspired protests that eventually forced Yemen’s veteran president Ali Abdullah Saleh to cede power in the face of a popular uprising.
A local source in Jaar, where dead and wounded extremists were taken, said that 12 militants were also killed late on Sunday in artillery shelling by the army on the outskirts of Zinjibar.
Dozens of fighters have poured in from the town of Azzan in Shabwa to back fighters in Zinjibar, he said. Among them were nationals from neighboring Gulf states, mainly Saudi Arabia.
The conflict with Islamists in the south is only one of several challenges facing the new president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who took office vowing to fight al-Qaeda, only to have more than 100 soldiers killed in a series of attacks in his first days in power.
Washington, which has pursued a campaign of assassination by drone and missile against alleged al-Qaeda targets in Yemen, wants Hadi to reunify a military that split between Saleh’s foes and allies last year, and focus it on \"counter-terrorism\".
Yemen’s main airport in the capital, Sana’a, was paralysed for a day after Hadi sacked the air force commander, a relative of Saleh, on Friday, and pro-Saleh officers responded by blockading the airport with vehicles.  Forces loyal to Saleh\'s half-brother, who refused to quit after being sacked by President Abdrabbu Mansour Hady, surrounded the airport late on Saturday.
Head of General Authority for Civil Aviation and Meteorology (GACAM) Hamed Farag told the Yemen News Agency (SABA), that the authority has informed today that all flights have resumed at the airport.
\"The airport was shut down on Saturday after receiving threats from armed groups, who fired shots in areas close to the runways which affected aviation safety\", Farag said.
President Abdrabbu Mansour Hady\'s recent decisions were objected to by the General People\'s Congress Party (GPC), headed by former President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, but were nevertheless received positively on the national, regional, and international levels.
A government official said they backed down only after warnings from the United States and the Gulf countries which crafted the deal that made Hadi president.
This comes after a weekend of violence in southern Yemen when twenty-one militants associated with  al-Qaeda were killed in attacks carried out by Yemeni troops and US aircraft on al-Qaeda bases in the governorates of Abin and Shabwa.
A security source in Abin governorate said 16 al-Qaeda fighters were killed in an airstrike carried out by the Yemeni army on Saturday and Sunday, targetting bases of militants from the  Ansar al-Sharia group, affiliated to al-Qaeda, in al-Kud region, close to the province\'s capital city, Zinjibar.
In the neighbouring province, Shabwa, security officials disclosed that two US airstrikes conducted by drone aircraft on Sunday evening, left five militants dead.