A suspected Al-Qaeda attack on an army checkpoint in southeast Yemen on Saturday killed one soldier and wounded another, a security source said.

The attack targeted an army checkpoint in the Al-Qatn area of the semi-desert Hadramawt province, the source said.

The source said that the gunmen, suspected Al-Qaeda militants, had fled.

Yemeni troops launched an offensive in late April to dislodge Al-Qaeda militants from their strongholds in the south of the country.

One hundred soldiers and 500 militants were killed in the operation, a military spokesman said on Thursday.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is considered by Washington the global jihadist network's deadliest franchise.

The group was created in a merger between the network's Yemeni and Saudi branches, and it has been targeted by US drone strikes this year.

Taking advantage of a collapse of central authority during a 2011 uprising that forced veteran strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh from power, Al-Qaeda seized swathes of the south and east.

They remain deeply entrenched in Hadramawt province further east, where they have carried out a series of spectacular attacks in past months.