ADEN: Overnight clashes outside a militant-controlled city in volatile south Yemen killed three soldiers and six militants, a security official said on Wednesday.

Yemen has repeatedly said its forces are making gains against militants, who are suspected of ties to Al-Qaeda and have taken over two large cities in the flashpoint province of Abyan.

But the army has yet to regain control since the region was plunged into almost daily violence some months ago, bloodshed that has driven away some 90,000 residents.

The security official told Reuters that one of the three soldiers killed was an officer, and that the battle took place late at night near the southern entrance to Abyan’s provincial capital, Zinjibar, which has been held by militants since May. The coastal city lies east of the strategic Bab Al-Mandab strait, where some 3 million barrels of oil pass daily.

On Wednesday, Yemen said its troops had pushed back militants from an area about 8 km (5 miles) outside Zinjibar.

President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s government has lost control of some parts of the south amid rising political turmoil, as mass protests demanding an end to his 33-year rule drag into their eight month in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula state.

Analysts fear that spreading chaos in Yemen is giving the branch of Al-Qaeda entrenched there more room to operate.

Saleh’s opponents accuse his government of exaggerating the Al-Qaeda threat in Yemen and even encouraging militants in order to pressure Riyadh and Washington to back his continued rule.

Saleh is still recovering in Saudi Arabia from severe wounds during a June bomb attack but has vowed to return to Yemen, a course of action Washington has advised him not to pursue.