Houthis capture 200 Yemeni soldiers: Official

Houthi rebels captured 200 Yemeni soldiers in the country's north where deadly fighting between the rebels and army-backed tribes is endangering a fragile truce, a military official said on Tuesday.

"Huthi (rebels) captured 200 soldiers," the official said on condition of anonymity, adding that "these soldiers belong to regiment 72 of the army's republican guard."

On Monday, another military official said that the Houthis had captured some 70 soldiers after they seized a strategic army post in Al-Zaala, a day after six soldiers were killed in fighting between the rebels and a government-backed tribe in the tense north.

Al-Zaala in Amran province controls the road between Sanaa and Saada, the rebels' stronghold.

The rebels' spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam declined to confirm the number of captured soldiers.

"It might be true that there are prisoners, but no information is available on either their number or their fate."

At least 70 people were reportedly killed last week in clashes that have rattled an already fragile truce agreed in February that ended a six-month round of fighting in the conflict between the rebels and the army, which started in 2004.

The Houthis and the government have repeatedly exchanged accusations of violating the February ceasefire.

Four soldiers killed in south of Yemen

Also, in the separatist southern region in Yemen, four soldiers were killed and 13 wounded including a senior security official in two attacks, officials said on Tuesday, part of a wave of unrest that has raised fears of a sustained separatist insurgency.

In one of the latest attacks, gunmen ambushed a security patrol in the flashpoint province of Lahej late on Monday, killing four soldiers and wounding nine, a Defense Ministry website said, citing a regional security director.

In the other assault on Monday evening, suspected secessionists attacked military sites in the southern city of Dalea with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, a Yemeni official said. A provincial security director was wounded along with three soldiers.

Violence in the south has increased in recent months, with separatist ambushes and government crackdowns leading to many deaths on both sides.

North and south Yemen formally united in 1990, but many in the south, where most of Yemen's oil facilities are located, complain northerners exploit the south's resources and discriminate against southern citizens.

The impoverished Arabian Peninsula state, neighbor to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia and located on a major shipping lane, has faced international pressure to quell domestic conflicts in order to focus on quashing al Qaeda.

Yemen has been a focus of Western security concerns after a string of attacks attributed to the Yemen-based regional arm of al Qaeda, including an attempted bombing of a U.S.-bound plane and a suicide attack targeting the British ambassador.