SANAA: Two police officers and five suspected Al-Qaeda militants were killed and five others, including two policemen, were wounded yesterday after security forces raided a house sheltering wanted suspects in eastern Yemen, a provincial governor said.

The fighting broke out after police forces tried to storm a house in the historical town of Tarim in the eastern Hadhramout province.

Salem Al-Khanbashi, the governor of Hadhramout in southeastern Yemen, told the official Saba news agency that among the dead officers was the deputy superintendent of Tarim police.

Al-Khanbashi said security forces seized a cache of weapons and explosives in the house as well as blueprints of terrorist plots.

Another provincial official told Arab News by phone that seven suspects, holed up in the house, opened fire and hurled grenades at police surrounding the house.

Police returned fire, killing one suspect and wounding five others. Four of the five injured died later of their wounds, said the official, who asked not to be named.

One suspect managed to escape from the house, but was arrested later at a nearby checkpoint, the official said.

Residents said police set up checkpoints in the town and on a main road leading to the neighboring city of Sayoun where a suicide bomber exploded a car bomb outside a police compound on July 25, killing a policeman and wounding 18 others.

Last week, officials said police had launched a massive manhunt for 12 suspected Al-Qaeda members, including a Saudi, linked to the car bomb attack.

The Saudi national, Muhammad bin Nayif Al-Qahtani, is also wanted by the authorities in the Kingdom on terrorism charges, the officials said.

An Al-Qaeda wing in Yemen claimed responsibility for the car bombing, saying it was in retaliation for the killing of five Al-Qaeda members by Yemeni police.

Since the attack, police have arrested 10 suspects in the southern province of Abyan and initiated a wide-scale search for members of extremist groups believed to have links to strings of bombings against police and government facilities in the past few months.

A manhunt is also under way in the provinces of Shabwa and Marib, where Al-Qaeda has an active presence, the officials said in remarks published by state media.

Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for three recent car bomb attacks in Yemen, including the July 2007 attack on a tourist convoy in the central province of Marib that killed eight Spanish tourists.

In September 2006, two Al-Qaeda suicide attackers blew up an explosives-laden pickup in the Safer oil refinery also in Marib. A simultaneous bombing hit an oil exporting port in Hadhramout, killing a security guard and two suicide attackers.