Yemen Al Qaeda gunmen seize hospitals to treat wounded

ADEN — Al Qaeda militants have seized hospitals in southern Yemen to treat wounded comrades following blistering air strikes that killed scores of gunmen in two days, medics said Thursday.

An intensive aerial campaign by US drones and Yemeni jet fighters on Al Qaeda bases in the rugged mountains of nearby Abyan province killed some 70 militants over the weekend.

On Sunday, militants stormed the hospital of Azzan, in Shabwa province, as well as two smaller medical centres in nearby districts, the sources said.

They counted experienced doctors among their number, who tended the wounded.

“They forced us out of the centres along with other members of staff and brought in their wounded,” a doctor at a medical centre in the town of Al Saeed told AFP.

After the raids, militants arrived with casualties in pick-up trucks, accompanied by “several doctors, including Arabs and foreigners”, he said.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) remains active in southern and eastern Yemen, despite successive military operations against it.

AQAP has been linked to a number of failed terror plots against the United States, and its leader Nasser Al Wuhayshi has appeared in a rare video in which he vowed to attack Western “crusaders... everywhere in the world”.