Yemen tribesmen kill 4 oil field guards in southeast

Yemeni tribesmen have clashed with soldiers in charge of guarding oil installations in the south of the country, killing four troops.

According to an unnamed military official, the gunfight broke out on Wednesday in the Wadi Dawan area of Hadhramawt Province, near an oil field.

The armed tribesmen were said to have attacked a military convoy that was transporting supplies to their post.

An unknown number of attackers were also killed in the clashes, witnesses said.

In a separate incident, a military intelligence officer, identified as Colonel Mohammed al-Zahrawi, was shot dead in the volatile city of Aden in the Arabian Peninsula country’s south.

The attacks come a day after two suspected al-Qaeda-linked militants on a motorcycle sprayed with bullets a car carrying Colonel Murad al-Amudi, deputy director of the criminal investigation department in Hadhramaut’s provincial capital of Mukalla.

Amudi and his bodyguard died on the spot and the assailants sped off and their whereabouts remain unknown.

Over the past months, al-Qaeda militants have frequently carried out attacks on Yemen’s security forces. The militants have been also engaged in battle with the Ansarullah fighters of the Houthi movement.

Ansarullah revolutionaries, who played a major role in the 2011 ouster of Yemen’s former dictator, Ali Abdullah Saleh, have driven the al-Qaeda militants out of many areas in the country.