Yemeni government forces captured al-Qaeda’s main stronghold in the southern part of the country on Tuesday after insurgents blew up the local government compound there and fled, the Defense Ministry said.

The mountainous al-Mahfad area of Abyan province, along with Azzan in the adjacent province of Shabwa, has been the militants’ main stronghold in Yemen since 2012. In that year, the Yemeni army, with U.S. help, drove the fighters from towns they had seized during a chaotic national uprising in 2011.

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The foreign-backed militants operating in Syria’s Old City of Homs began withdrawing from the area.

The militants are leaving the old city under an agreement reached on Sunday between the Syrian government and the militants.

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About 30 Syrian government fighters were killed when opposition forces set off a bomb in a tunnel beneath a checkpoint in a northwestern province, activists said on Tuesday.

Videos and images posted by opposition supporters online showed a massive plume of smoke and earth shooting into the air near a small town as men shouted “Allahu akbar” (God is greatest).

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The army today killed 40 Al-Qaeda suspects, mainly foreigners, and wounded dozens of others on day six of a major offensive in southern Yemen, military officials said.

Most of the “terrorists” were killed in Shabwa province during the ongoing operation against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the defence ministry said in text messages sent to journalists.

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Around 60,000 people have fled towns in Deir Ezzor province of eastern Syria that have been the scene of fierce clashes between rival jihadists, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.

The battle between al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front and the breakaway Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has raged for four days despite an order from al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri to stop fighting.

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