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A bomb attack on Friday in southern Yemen killed at least 16 pro-government fighters, a military official said, in one of the deadliest operations claimed by Al-Qaeda jihadists in months.

An explosive-laden vehicle targeted a site of the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist group allied with the government, said STC spokesperson Mohammed Al-Naqib.

The attack at the barracks in Abyan province killed at least 16 fighters and wounded 18 others, Naqib said, blaming Al-Qaeda which claimed the operation.

The death toll was expected to climb due to the severity of the injuries, Naqib told AFP.

Al-Qaeda in a statement said a bomber detonated a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device at the military post, according to the US-based SITE Intelligence Group.

Yemen is a hotbed for jihadists such as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), considered by the United States to be the Sunni extremist group's most dangerous offshoot.

AQAP frequently attacks both Yemeni security forces and Western targets.

It has claimed numerous high-profile attacks in the United States and Europe – including the 2015 assault on Charlie Hebdo magazine in France's capital that killed 12 people – although these have declined in recent years.

In Yemen, Al-Qaeda jihadists attacked separatist troops in March in the country's south, killing two.

In August 2023, a bombing blamed on the group also in southern Yemen killed four STC fighters. Another Al-Qaeda attack that month killed five STC fighters.

And almost a year earlier, 21 separatist fighters were killed in an Al-Qaeda attack on Abyan in September 2022.

In March this year, AQAP announced that Saad Al-Awlaki, a Yemeni national wanted by the United States, had taken the helm of the organisation after the death its former leader, Khalid Batarfi, following a long illness.

Long on the front line of the war against Al-Qaeda, Yemen erupted into war in 2014 when Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa.

A Saudi-led military coalition intervened the following year on the side of the country's internationally recognised government.

Born in 2009 from the merger of Al-Qaeda's Yemeni and Saudi factions, AQAP grew and developed in the chaos of the war.

But it is now just one of many armed movements in southern Yemen, including the Islamic State jihadist group and UAE-trained separatist militias that back the internationally recognised government against the Houthis.