“The soldiers were breaking the (Muslim Ramadan) fast when four armed militants attacked them using RPG (rocket-propelled grenades)… and machine guns,” the official said.
Seven of the soldiers were killed on the spot while the eighth one was wounded and later died of his injuries at the hospital, the official added.
Another soldier was killed three others were wounded in an ambush in the southern province of Lahij, the defense ministry’s news website reported.
“Armed outlaw elements… opened fire on members of a patrol killing the soldier Bilal Hael” and wounding three others late on Friday, 26sep.net quoted security official Lieutenant Colonel Salah al-Dawoodi as saying.
A committee was set up to investigate the incident, Dawoodi said.
On Tuesday, gunmen shot dead four policemen and wounded two others in a similar ambush in Zinjibar, in neighbouring Abyan province, a security source had said.
Earlier this month, armed men ambushed the chief of the Lahij intelligence service’s investigations department, who was killed in a hail of bullets.
South Yemen, where many residents complain of discrimination by the Sanaa government in the allocation of resources, is the site of frequent protests and periodic unrest.
The region is also feared to have become a base for al-Qaeda militants to regroup under the network’s local franchise, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
Yemen is trying to quell a resurgent regional arm of al-Qaeda which has increased attacks on Western and regional targets in the poverty-stricken Arabian Peninsula state.abia.
It faces pressure to resolve domestic conflicts consuming its resources, including cementing a truce with Shiite rebels to end a civil war in the north that has raged on and off since 2004, and ending a separatist insurrection in the south.
Source: AlArabiya.net