Aden (South24)

Three members of the Southern Armed Forces were killed and seven others wounded on Friday (December 12) in a “terrorist” attack carried out by Muslim Brotherhood elements on the Areen Camp in the Al-Aqlah oil area of Shabwa governorate, a military source confirmed to South24.

The source said that the killed and injured belong to the Shabwa Defense Forces, noting that Southern forces “immediately repelled the attack and inflicted heavy losses on the attackers.” He stressed that the operation “was not carried out using a drone,” contrary to circulating claims.

In a statement, the spokesperson for the Southern Armed Forces, Lt. Col. Mohammed Al-Naqeeb, said that the Shabwa Defense Forces confronted the attack “with great ferocity,” adding that the attackers belonged to “terrorist Muslim Brotherhood groups that fled from the Wadi and Desert of Hadramout.” He emphasized that “this hostile terrorist act will not go unanswered.”

The Areen attack came a day after an Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) assault in the Al-Musayniah area of Shabwa. Local and military sources told South24 on Wednesday (December 10) that Southern forces repelled an attack launched by AQAP elements there, inflicting significant losses. A South24 correspondent reported that the clashes resulted in the death of two Southern soldiers, one of whom later died from his wounds.

Developments in Shabwa coincide with a parallel escalation in Hadramout and Abyan governorates. Since the liberation of Wadi Hadramout in early December, AQAP has intensified its attacks against Southern forces through coordinated operations involving improvised explosive devices, drones, and mortar fire.

On December 6, two officers and two soldiers from the Southern Forces were killed when an explosive device detonated on the Al-Khasha’ah–Al-Abr road near Marib. In Abyan, the group carried out two consecutive attacks on Southern forces’ positions in Wadi Omran on December 6 and 7, wounding a soldier in the first attack and killing another in the second.

This complex security scene has also been accompanied by parallel Houthi movements. On December 10, the Houthis destroyed large sections of the Tharah–Mekiras road linking Abyan and Al-Bayda, in what field sources said was an attempt to “closing the road in anticipation of any military operations.”

The convergence of these attacks, by AQAP, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Houthis, reflects an escalating reality in which armed groups are seeking to redeploy and exploit the transitional phase in the south by opening multiple fronts, while Southern Forces continue their operations to secure areas of deployment and prevent these groups from returning to their former safe havens.

Areen lies within the Al-Aqlah oil area, which contains several oil fields where Southern Forces recently announced their deployment.

Al-Aqlah also includes one of Shabwa’s most important oil sectors, most notably Sector S2, which is connected to transportation lines extending to the Ayadh facility and the Al-Nashimah export terminal.