At least 13 rebels killed in fresh Yemen fighting (Roundup)

Dec 28, 2009, 18:24 GMT

Sanaa, Yemen - At least 13 Houthi rebels were killed in fresh fighting in Yemen's north, security officials said Monday, as the country vowed to continue its battle against al-Qaeda in the south.

Yemeni forces 'flattened' rebel positions in the Aqab district of Yemen's north, near the Saudi border, the country's official SABA news agency reported. The Houthi rebels, on their website, said Saudi ground and air forces had continued striking in northern Yemen.

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah last week said Saudi troops would not cross the Yemeni border.

In recent days, high-ranking Yemeni officials had appeared confident they were close to winning the campaign against Houthis. Yemeni security officials claimed, and Houthi rebels denied, that rebel leader Abdel-Malik al-Houthi had been killed.

On Monday, however, Yemeni officials denied rumours of truce negotiations.

'There are neither negotiations nor a truce with the rebels for the time being,' a Yemeni security official told the German Press Agency dpa on condition of anonymity. 'The military campaign will continue until the end.'

The Yemeni government, meanwhile, said it would continue its campaign against al-Qaeda militants it says have taken root in the country's south.

The military will 'relentlessly pursue the terrorists and catch them and bring them to justice,' a Yemeni security official told SABA.

'The chase after them will continue until their terrorism is uprooted and the land of Yemen is cleansed of their satanic filth,' he said, noting security forces had killed more than 60 operatives in the past 10 days.

The Yemeni weekly al-Mithaq on Monday cited Mohammed al-Anisi, Yemen's national security chief, as saying that more than 29 suspected al-Qaeda members had been arrested in the country in recent weeks.

The detained men were hatching a plot to attack foreign schools and the British Embassy in Sanaa, al-Anisi said.

The Yemeni national security chief further confirmed the that United States was aiding Yemeni forces in their battle against al- Qaeda.

The Pentagon will spend over 70 million dollars in the next 18 months to help Yemen's military efforts, the New York Times quoted US military officials as saying Monday.

Yemen's campaign against al-Qaeda has once again come to international attention after ABC television reported the man charged with the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a flight to the United States said he had been trained in Yemen.

Strikes against suspected al-Qaeda operatives had been delayed because of the civil war in the country's north, Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakri al-Qirbi told 'Arab diplomats' cited in the regional daily al-Sharq al-Awsat on Monday.

Al-Qaeda has been blamed for a 2008 bomb attack on the US Embassy in Yemen and a 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the port of Aden.