Qassim Al-Afifi, the deputy governor of Al-Dhale' province, said Rashad Al-Alimi was unharmed in the attack near the village of Hibailin. Government troops killed one of the assailants and wounded two more in a gunbattle that lasted more than an hour before reinforcements arrived, Al-Afifi said.

He said that the government bodyguard killed was a member of the Yemeni presidential guard, and called the motorcade the “presidential convoy,” but stressed that Yemen's president was not in any of the vehicles.

The attack comes two days after another deputy prime minister escaped an ambush on his convoy.

Al-Afifi accused southern secessionists of being behind Saturday's attack.

But Nasser Al-Khubji, a local leader of the southern secessionist movement, rejected the charges. “The want to tarnish the image of the movement and provide an excuse for a further crackdown” on the south, Al-Khubji told The Associated Press.

Yemen has been struggling with a secessionist movement in its south, where an increasingly vocal separatists have clashed with the central government. The south was a separate country until it unified with the north in 1990, and complains that it is discriminated against by the northerner-dominated government.