Three suspected members of Al-Qaeda’s regional wing were also killed in the clashes on Sunday in the Mudiyah district in Abyan province on the Arabian Sea coast, where the army has battled militants in recent months, the official said.

On Saturday, a car bomb wounded a senior intelligence officer and his assistant in Abyan, a security source said, and a government website said two militants died in a botched suicide attack with a car on a security patrol in Mudiyah.

Mudiyah’s police chief was killed in a suspected Al-Qaeda attack last week and the provincial governor survived an assassination attempt.

Yemen is trying to quell a resurgent branch of Al-Qaeda that has increased attacks on Western and regional targets in the country.

It is also trying to cement a truce with Shiite rebels to end a civil war in the north that has raged on and off since 2004, and to end a separatist rebellion in the south.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), an arm of Al-Qaeda, has stepped up attacks on Yemeni and Western targets since it claimed a failed US airliner bombing in December.

The government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh has been under pressure since then to go after Al-Qaeda more vigorously, with US help. Occasional American missile strikes to back the crackdown have sometimes killed civilians as well as militants.

France urged spouses and children of its citizens last week to leave following a rocket attack targeting a British diplomat in Sanaa and the death of a Frenchman after a security guard an an Austrian oil and gas firm opened fire.