About 15 soldiers were killed and 25 more were wounded in an attack carried out by Al-Qaeda on Friday morning against the 15th Brigade in the coastal town of Shaqrah in Abyan.
Military sources affirmed that six suicide bombers on a bomb car managed to enter the 115th Brigade after a skirmish with guards.
They said that the bombers who had explosive belts clashed with the brigade's soldiers and others deployed inside the brigade, affirming that three officers with colonel ranks were among the killed.
The Defense Ministry said that eight al-Qaeda militants were killed, pointing out that experts managed to dissuade their explosive belts.
This attack came one day after nine soldiers of Al-Qaeda including Nadir al-Shadadi, an al-Qaeda leader, were killed in a US air raid on Thursday.
The Yemeni authorities accuse al-Shadadi for planning to carry out a number of attacks against troops in Abyan.
Abyan was once an al-Qaida stronghold until government troops swept through in an offensive earlier this year.
The U.S. has been helping the country in its efforts against the group, considering the Yemen branch the most dangerous of its offshoots.
Washington considers Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, as the Yemeni branch of the network is known, to be the group's most dangerous offshoot, which it holds responsible for several failed attacks on U.S. territory.
Yemen's security authorities say they foiled many plans of Al-Qaeda to carry out terrorist attacks in the capital Sana'a, affirming that seized 40 belts packed with explosives.