SANAA: Yemeni security forces killed at least 28 Al-Qaeda militants and captured 17 others in operations backed by air strikes on Thursday that foiled imminent suicide attacks, the defence ministry said.

Witnesses said several civilians were killed in an attack on an alleged training camp for Al-Qaeda, which is believed to have regrouped in Yemen for strikes on neighbouring Saudi Arabia, in the southern province of Abyan.

Raids also took place in the capital Sanaa and the neighbouring district of Arhab, a defence ministry official said in a statement carried by the ministry-linked website 26sep.net.

Yemeni security forces targeted a site used as a training camp for Al-Qaeda in the Abyan village of Al-Maajala, some 480 kilometres (300 miles) southeast of Sanaa.

"Between 24 and 30 Al-Qaeda militants, including foreigners, were killed while training," the official said.

But witnesses in Al-Maajala told AFP that about 50 people were killed in the attack, including an unknown number of civilians in the district which was targeted by air raids.

About 12 jet fighters took part in the raid which hit the civilian neighbourhood by mistake, a local official in Abyan told AFP, requesting anonymity.

The region of Abyan, part of the former South Yemen republic, has over the past years become a regrouping base for Islamist militants, including Arab veterans of the 1980s war in Afghanistan against Soviet occupation.

The ministry official said Yemeni security forces, supported by aircraft, also attacked several Al-Qaeda targets in Arhab, where a cell was found preparing suicide attacks on Yemeni and foreign interests.

Four more militants were killed and four others arrested in Arhab, he said in a later statement.

The defence ministry, meanwhile, said that 13 militants were captured in raids in the capital.

A Yemeni security official who asked not to be named told AFP that authorities "were expecting a large operation by Al-Qaeda in Sanaa," but he did not elaborate.

Yemen is the ancestral homeland of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and has been the scene of several attacks claimed by the group on foreign missions, tourist sites and oil installations.

The group has suffered setbacks amid US pressure on Sanaa to crack down but its presence threatens to turn Yemen into a base for training and plotting attacks, a top US counterterrorism official said in September.

The Saudi branch of Al-Qaeda is believed to have joined forces with militants in Yemen under the banner of Al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula with the aim of launching attacks in Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi member of the group in August blew himself up at an arm's length from the kingdom's deputy interior minister, Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, after having evaded security measures by claiming he wanted to repent.

The rugged terrain of Yemen, which stretches over 529,000 square kilometres (204,248 square miles), provides ideal cover for armed groups.