Yemeni troops killed six suspected Al-Qaeda fighters outside the southeastern port city of Mukalla on Tuesday, a security official said.
Mukalla was the most populous Yemeni city under Al-Qaeda control until government troops and coalition special forces recaptured it in April ending a year of militant rule.
But the militants regrouped in the surrounding mountains from where they have carried out a series of deadly revenge attacks.
“We launched an operation against Al-Qaeda early this morning in the village of Hamra,” west of Mukalla, the security official told AFP.
“It was a preemptive operation carried out with the support of warplanes of the Arab coalition,” he said, adding that four suspected militants were also captured.
“(The militants) continue to pose a threat to Mukalla and further revenge attacks can’t be excluded.”
Suicide bombings claimed by Al-Qaeda killed 11 people at two army checkpoints in the city in July.
In June, Al-Qaeda’s militant rival, the Daesh group, claimed a wave of suicide bombings that killed at least 42 people in Mukalla.
In the southern province of Shabwa late on Monday, suspected Al-Qaeda fighters executed a man they accused of sorcery in front of his family, another security official said.
They then dynamited the family’s home but the explosives went off prematurely and two of the militants were killed.
Washington regards Al-Qaeda’s Yemen-based branch as its most dangerous and has kept up a long-running drone war against its commanders.

Source: Arab News