File photo shows a militant in Yemen.
A Yemeni police officer has been killed in a drive-by shooting in the country’s southeastern Hadramawt province, the latest in armed assaults targeting the Yemeni military personnel.
œTwo armed men suspected of belonging to Al-Qaeda opened fire at the officer, Mahmud al-Nakhii, who was in a police car in the main street of Ghayl Bawazir (town),” an unnamed official said on Tuesday.
The assailants fled the scene and their whereabouts remain unknown, the official added.
In a similar incident, on October 4, unidentified assailants shot and killed Lieutenant Colonel Waleed al-Wahabi, a member of the special forces, in Aden™s Tawahi District.
Also, five Yemeni officers were killed as a police checkpoint came under attack by gunmen in Hadramawt province on October 2.
On September 20, gunmen carried out three separate attacks, involving car bombs, in Yemen™s southern province of Shabwa, killing over 50 Yemeni soldiers.
The operation was the deadliest attack on the Yemeni army since a May 21 bomb attack last year, in which nearly 100 soldiers were killed in the capital, Sana™a.
Attacks against Yemeni military personnel have been on the rise over the past months. Officials in Yemen blame the attacks on al-Qaeda militants operating in the Arabian Peninsula. Shabwa Province is a stronghold of the terrorist group.
Al-Qaeda loyalists have carried out a spate of deadly attacks against Yemeni security forces since dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh™s successor, President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, came to power in February 2012.
MAM/MAM
Copyright: Press TV