ADEN, Yemen, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- About three soldiers of the newly-recruited Yemeni troops were killed Wednesday when a booby-trapped car hit a military convoy in the southeastern province of Shabwa, a security official told Xinhua.
"The troops were targeted by a terrorist attack with a booby-trapped car that killed three soldiers and injured a number of others in the entrance of Saeed district of Shabwa province," the local security source said on condition of anonymity.
He said that the Yemeni troops backed by the United Arab Emirates were deployed in Shabwa in an attempt to kick the al-Qaida terrorists out of their hideouts in rugged areas and villages.
The UAE-backed troops with armored vehicles entered al-Qaida-held areas and conducted an operation to track all the terrorists there, the source added.
According to local tribal sources, key leaders of the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch gave up fighting and surrendered themselves after the arrival of the UAE-backed troops in Shabwa's village of Yashbum.
Elsewhere in Yemen, suspected al-Qaida militants launched an armed attack using grenades on an army base in Dawan of Hadramout's province.
The guards stationed around the army base managed to repulse the attack and killed four of the attackers at the scene, according to local Yemeni officials.
On Tuesday night, an unmanned U.S. aircraft fired missiles on vehicle carrying al-Qaida militants in the central province of al-Bayda, killing at least three members of the terrorist group.
Al-Qaida militants are intensifying their drive-by attacks on security checkpoints in the Yemeni southern provinces as UAE-backed government forces increase military operations against their hideouts in the war-plagued Arab country.
During the past months, Yemeni government forces and the UAE armed forces operating in the southern province of Aden launched a new anti-terror offensive "to root out al-Qaida militants from their strongholds in neighboring southern province of Abyan."
Thousands of southern recruits joined the campaign after receiving military training and financial support from the UAE forces.
The UAE-backed anti-terror campaign has dislodged al-Qaida militants from several villages in Abyan and in the neighboring southeastern province of Shabwa, with more than 50 of them arrested and moved to prisons in Aden.
The Yemen-based al-Qaida branch, seen by the United States as the global terror network's most dangerous branch, has exploited years of deadly conflict between Yemen's government and Houthi rebels to expand its presence, especially in Shabwa and Abyan provinces.
