At least 30 suspected al-Qaeda militants² have been killed by an air strike in a remote mountainous area of Yemen, security officials say.

也门安全官员称，某偏远山区至少30名基地组织武装嫌疑犯在一次空袭中被杀。

Yemen: New 'war on terror' frontier

An unnamed official told reporters the strike took place as dozens of militants激进分子 gathered in Shabwa province, east of the capital, Sanaa.

Two senior al-Qaeda commanders in the Arabian peninsula半岛 could be among the dead, he said.

Al-Qaeda has carried out frequent attacks in Yemen in recent months.

The Saudi government has recently expressed its concern about the resurgence再现，复活 of the movement in the region.

'Planning attacks'

AFP news agency quoted the security official as saying Saudis and Iranians had been at the suspected al-Qaeda meeting.

"We are still unsure if two of the top leaders have been killed or not," Reuters news agency quoted him as saying.

"One of them is the Saudi al-Qaeda member Nasser al-Weheshi."

Another official told AFP that the suspected militants had been meeting to plan terror attacks in Yemen, in retaliation⁴报复，反击 for Yemeni military air strikes carried out last week.

Reuters路透社 news agency cited a security official saying that a radical⁵ Muslim preacher传教士，牧师 linked to the US army psychiatrist⁶精神病学家 charged over the fatal shooting of 13 people at a US army base was suspected to be among those killed.

Yemen-based al-Qaeda sympathiser Anwar al-Awlaki, who was released from a Yemeni prison last year, and Maj Nidal Hasan had exchanged e-mails before the shooting at Fort Hood⁷ last month, US officials say.

Last week, Yemeni officials said they had killed 34 suspected al-Qaeda militants and arrested 17 in operations in Abyan province in the south and in Arhab, north of Sanaa.

Officials said the militants had allegedly been planning multiple suicide attacks, with eight of them preparing explosive vests at the time of the raids.

Analysts⁸ say Yemen, the ancestral home原籍，祖籍 of al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin⁹ Laden¹⁰, has long been an ideal base for jihadists.

With its rugged¹¹粗糙的，崎岖的 mountains and traditionally weak central authority, it is terrain地形，地势 well suited to militant¹ groups looking for hiding places and training camps.

The US has given nearly $70m (£44m) in military aid to the Yemeni government this year, the Associated Press reports, as it seeks to better equip Yemeni forces for the fight against al-Qaeda militants.