YEMEN: Al-Qaeda fighters stormed a prison in south-eastern Yemen on April 03, releasing scores of militants and hundreds of other prisoners.
Two senior figures from the group's Yemeni branch, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), were believed to be among those liberated from the jail in the coastal city of Mukalla.
One, Khalid Batarfi, had been the group's leader in the province of Abyan, which it controlled for almost a year between 2011 and 2012. The identity of the second man remains unknown.
News of the early-morning jailbreak will concern officials in Washington, which has waged a six year military campaign against AQAP. The group has used Yemen as a staging post from which to hatch terrorist plots against Western targets.
Mukalla is the biggest city in Hadramaut province, the ancestral homeland of the Bin Laden family and a haven for the militant group.
In an apparently coordinated offensive that began at about midnight on Wednesday, the jihadists attacked a series of secondary targets before moving in on the prison. It was a second time in a week that AQAP had capitalised on Yemen's chaos to attack vulnerable targets.
Saudi-led air strikes have been pounding rebel positions since last Wednesday, in an attempt to halt the march of the Shia militia known as the Houthis across the country.
The rebels are allied to the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and pitted against forces loyal to the exiled internationally recognised president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, as well as southern tribesmen hostile to the incursion on to their territory.
They have seized the capital, Sana'a, and the third city, Taiz, and yesterday reached the centre of the southern port city of Aden, including its historic Crater district. Witnesses said they were trying to enter residential areas and were setting up rootop sniper points.
"The clashes are fierce. The Houthis are using tanks to target houses and public properties," Mohamed Taiseer, a photographer covering the fighting said from Aden.
"I was in Crater an hour ago. There are fierce battles. They targeted some houses, Mecca market, Hijaz Mall, the Ahli bank with tanks."
According to one report, ground troops from the Saudi-led coalition landed at Aden Port, but that was denied by port officials and witnesses.