Gunmen attacked a Yemeni military patrol in the southern city of Taez, killing a soldier, Yemen's state news agency said on Friday, in a resumption of clashes between loyalists and opponents of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

The agency called the attackers "anarchic, lawless elements", without specifying their identity. Two other soldiers were wounded, it said.

Taez has been the scene of months of popular protests demanding the removal of Saleh, who is now in Saudi Arabia where he went for treatment of wounds suffered in an assassination attempt in June.

The protests in Taez, 200 km (120 miles) from the capital Sanaa, have split the city into halves controlled by government forces and those aligned with tribesmen who want him gone and side with anti-Saleh demonstrators.

Several ceasefires between the belligerents have collapsed, including one that was to have taken force this week.

The standoff over Saleh's fate has paralysed the Arab world's poorest country, with Yemen's multiple regional conflicts, including one with Islamists in a southern province, flaring up since protests against him broke out in January.