SANAA – Al-Qaeda militants killed 10 Yemeni soldiers in three simultaneous attacks Thursday, Jan. 16, on army positions in the central province of Bayda, a military official said.

Eight extremists were also killed in the assaults, which prompted further clashes with the army, a local official said.

“Al-Qaeda assailants carried out simultaneous attacks against three military positions in Rada” in Bayda, an extremist stronghold, the official said.

Four soldiers were also captured, according the military source.

Among the attackers was one wearing an explosive belt who was killed by soldiers.

“Dozens of gunmen were involved in the Rada attacks,” a local official said, adding that the militants in Bayda had received reinforcements from the al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansar al-Sharia group,” who arrived from the southern Abyan province.

Yemen’s air force intervened with air strikes on the area, army officials said.

Al-Qaeda supporters frequently target the 139th Brigade, stationed in Bayda since 2012 to battle radical Islamists there.

Farther east, a drone crashed in the remote Maharah desert near the border with Oman Thursday, a local government official said, without providing further details.

A Yemeni farmer was killed in a U.S. drone strike on Wednesday in what witnesses said was an attack apparently intended for suspected Islamist militants in the village of al-Houta in southeastern Yemen.