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The fierce gun battles raged between two barracks of the 111st Armored Army Brigade and al-Qaida militants along Zinjibar's main road, killing at least nine members of the terrorist group, the local security official said on condition of anonymity.
The heavy fighting began shortly after dawn across Abyan province, with shoulder-held rocket launchers, Katyusha shells, mortarsand heavy machine-guns being used, the official said.
In Sunday's fighting, four of the military's armored vehicles were set ablaze, according to a soldier who was involved in the gun fights.
There was no immediate report of casualty available among the army forces.
On Saturday, police officers said that an al-Qaida suicide bomber killed at least 32 soldiers of elite Republican Guard forces and injured dozens of others after he detonated his explosives-laden vehicle at the main gate of the presidential palace in the country's southeastern province of Hadramout.
The suicide bombing attack happened just several hours after the newly elected President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi took the constitutional oath at the parliament, after a landmark vote this week initiated in a Gulf-brokered power transfer deal.
Since late January 2011, when protests erupted against former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, militants of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) have been working to bolster their presence in the country's remote regions.
The group has taken control of several swathes and towns across the restive southern provinces, as the Yemeni government engaged in fierce clashes with the militants over the past several months, leaving hundreds of people killed.
The AQAP, entrenching itself mainly in Yemen's southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa, is on the terrorist list of the United States, which considers it as an increasing threat to its national security.
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