Al-Qaeda militants took control of a western district of Yemen’s main port city of Aden over the weekend, residents said yesterday, in another sign that the group is drawing strength from five months of civil war.

The entrance of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula into Aden, once one of the world’s busiest ports and the most secular and secure parts of an otherwise restive country, would be one of its biggest gains yet.

“Dozens of al-Qaeda militants were patrolling the streets with their weapons in total freedom in a number of areas in Tawahi. At the same time, others raised the al -Qaeda black flag above government buildings,” a resident said.

He said flag was also flying over the administrative building of the port, although a port official later said that the flag was flying at the gate of the port’s complex.

United Arab Emirates forces based in Aden meanwhile freed a British hostage who had been held by the group, the UAE state news agency WAM said yesterday. The hostage, earlier identified by a Yemeni police source as an oil worker abducted in February last year, was taken to the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi on a military plane on Saturday night, the agency said.

A Yemeni official said the hostage was rescued near a sprawling military base northwest of Aden. Residents say al-Qaeda fighters have also maintained a presence in the area.

Al-Qaeda militants were patrolling the streets with their weapons in total freedom

Britain’s Foreign Office confirmed in a statement that the hostage was “extracted by UAE forces in a military intelligence operation” and was “safe and well.”

Yemen’s Deputy Interior Minister Brigadier General Ali Nasser Lakhsha played down the threat posed by the gunmen in the Aden.

“What’s happening there relates to a bunch of lawless gunmen who do not constitute any danger to the city of Aden. Their behaviour shows they don’t belong to al-Qaeda and that they are trying to achieve narrow, self-interested goals,” he said, without elaborating.

A man stands on the rubble of houses destroyed by Saudi-led air strikes in Yemen’s central city of Taiz.

Hundreds of kilometres away in Yemen’s other Arabian Sea port city of Mukalla, residents and local officials said four al-Qaeda militants – two Saudis, a Yemeni and an Afghan – were killed in a suspected US drone strike.

The American bombing campaign has continued despite the power vacuum caused by the civil war that allowed al-Qaeda to gain partial control of Mukalla in April, and one such attack on the city in July killed the group’s deputy leader.

Forces loyal to Yemen’s exiled government in Saudi Arabia retook Aden from Iran-allied Houthi militia last month, with heavy backing from the kingdom and other Gulf Arab countries with air strikes, training and deployment of special forces.