Some opposition figures and activists charged that President Saleh allowed the capture of Zinjibar by the supposed Islamists to support his claims that the country would not be able to survive without him.
[citation needed] On 31 May, heavy street fighting and shelling was still going on with the military attempting to enter the city but still being holed up by the militants on Zinjibar's outskirts.
[69] By 20 June, government forces had killed five more fighters as they continued their offensive against Islamist militants in the city, losing five of their own men and suffering 21 wounded in the process.
[70] Despite the military claim of being on the verge of re-taking Zinjibar, the very next day, on 21 June, the 119th and 201st Artillery Brigades were forced to withdraw around three kilometers from positions they previously held in what the Army called a "tactical move".
Responding to pleas for support from the 25th Mechanised Brigade, which had been pinned down under siege for over a month, the Defence Ministry sent extra tanks, rocket launchers, and 500 new soldiers in a renewed effort to reestablish control over the city and the surrounding area.
The offensive opened up with a renewed landborne thrust against Islamist positions besieging the 25th Brigade, backed by heavy tank shelling and naval rocket strikes.
In addition, an official from Zinjibar stated that the army had succeeded intaking control of a local sports stadium in ongoing clashes with militants in the city.
28 soldiers had also been killed in heavy fighting during the previous two days,[47][86] including Brigadier General Ahmad Awad Hassan al-Marmi, the commander of military forces in Abyan province.
[3] The next day, a new round of air-strikes killed 15 militants and destroyed a captured army tank and several artillery positions held by the Islamists in the Dufas area near Zinjibar.
[87] On 11 August, local officials reported that four militants had been killed when government artillery struck their positions in the villages of Al-Khamla and Bajdar, located outside of Zinjibar.
[89] The next day, however, the village was reported by tribal sources to have fallen back into Islamist hands after government forces put up little resistance to a militant convoy advancing from a nearby town.
On 14 January, hundreds of people displaced by months of fighting were allowed to return to their homes after a temporary deal was reached between insurgent forces and the army units.
Thousands of people previously held protests demanding an end to the fighting that has forced them to flee their homes in the south, holding several 50 km (31 mile) marches from the port city of Aden to Zinjibar.
It was also revealed that previous military claims of taking back the city were untrue, with the militants still controlling most of Zinjibar and a few surrounding towns, namely Jaar where they paraded the captured soldiers.
In the days following the attack, the military conducted air-strikes against militant positions around Zinjibar which they claimed killed 42 Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula fighters.
[94][95][96][97][98][99] The Ansar al-Sharia (Yemen) group that took responsibility for the attack is believed to be just a re-branding of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to make it more appealing to the devout rural population.
Three days after the attack, the group let a Red Cross team into Jaar to treat 12 wounded soldiers and demanded a prisoner exchange with the government.
[102] Al-Qaeda's fighters stormed Jaar and Zinjibar in early December 2015 and recaptured the towns,[103] later declaring them "Emirates", providing civilian services, and establishing a Sharia court.
In summer 2016 Yemeni government forces backed by Arab coalition aircraft and gunboats moved to retake the towns, and despite encountering "repeated suicide attacks" drove AQAP out of Zinjibar on 14 August 2016.