STC announces end of its campaigns against Al-Qaeda in Abyan

ABYAN, Aug. 31 (YPA) – The leadership of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) factions announced on Thursday the end of their military campaigns against Al-Qaeda terrorist organization members in Abyan province, southern Yemen.

The command of the STC’s “Swords of Haws” campaign confirmed that it had cleared the last strongholds of the terrorist elements in the Modiyah district by securing the mountain peaks in “Omran” valley, all the way to the “Rakab Omran”, “Aqabat Hatib,” and “Al-Jinn” areas, and from there to the “Al-Hanakah” area separating Abyan and Shabwa provinces.

The STC factions have been subjected to many armed ambushes since the start of the campaign at the beginning of this August, as a result of which the commander of the “Security Belt” factions in Abyan, Abdullatif Al-Sayyid, and a number of leaders in the belt, in addition to the tribal sheikh Muhammad Kreed Al-Jaadani, were killed during the first days of the campaign.

Al-Qaeda members, in cooperation with Islah Party militants, launched widespread attacks targeting the positions of the STC factions in Modiyah and Al-Mahfad districts with mortar shells and explosive devices, leaving more than 520 members of the STC dead and wounded since the launch of the operation “Siham Al-Sharq” in August 2022, at a cost of approximately 11 billion riyals, and more than one billion riyals in losses in machinery, equipment, and weapons.

YPA