SANAA (Reuters) - Yemen on Wednesday sent special army troops led by the son of President Ali Abdullah Saleh to search for Muslim militants linked to Osama bin Laden a day after clashes killed at least 18 people from both sides.
``Special units led by Colonel Ahmed Ali Abdullah Saleh...have been dispatched to support army units in Marib and Shabwa provinces,'' a security official told Reuters.
Ahmed heads Yemen's Republican Guard, an elite force to protect the president.
Government officials said the army did not exchange fire with the militants and their tribal protectors on Wednesday but the search operations were going on.
``This is a hot pursuit that will continue until the terrorist elements are arrested,'' one official said.
Helicopter gunships backed by tanks stormed a hide-out used by bin Laden's supporters on Tuesday in the first military operation of its kind in Yemen since the September 11 attacks on the United States.
The move came nearly two weeks after U.S. ambassador to Yemen Edmund Hull said Washington and Sanaa had agreed on ''practical and important measures to combat terrorism.''
Tribal sources said 18 people have been killed from both sides and at least 25 others wounded in the blitz and ensuing clashes with the al-Jalal tribe, who are sheltering the militants in Marib province, some 85 miles east of the capital, Sanaa.
Tribal and security sources earlier put the death toll at 12. The government has said some soldiers were killed or injured, but gave no precise figures.
Government forces have been combing the Shabwa, Marib and al-Jouf provinces in eastern Yemen in a hunt for several suspects, including two or three tribal chiefs Washington has asked Yemen to arrest.