Five soldiers were killed in an ambush in Yemen's southern province of Shabwa on Wednesday in the third attack of its kind this month blamed by security officials on Al-Qaeda.
"Gunmen probably belonging to Al-Qaeda opened fire on an army vehicle in Habban in Shabwa province, killing five soldiers and wounding another," a security official said.
He added that the attackers then escaped.
On Monday, four soldiers died in a similar attack in the southeastern province of Hadramawt, and four policemen were killed on Saturday in an attack on a checkpoint in Shabwa.
Security services also blamed the two earlier attacks on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which has been branded by Washington as the extremist network's deadliest franchise.
In late April, the army launched a ground offensive against AQAP in Shabwa and nearby Abyan provinces.
The group is active across several parts of Yemen, taking advantage of a collapse of central authority during a 2011 uprising that ousted veteran president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
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