ADEN: Suspected militants killed five soldiers guarding a checkpoint in southeastern Yemen on Tuesday, local officials said, and a leader of a Shiite party was wounded in a drive-by shooting in the capital Sanaa in which two guards died.

A security source said gunmen in two vehicles stormed the Buroum checkpoint on the border between Shabwa and Hadramout provinces with automatic fire and grenades, killing the five soldiers.

The attack was the third in two weeks in Hadramout. Last month suspected militants killed 20 members of Yemen’s security forces in a raid on a checkpoint in Hadramout. Earlier this month, an officer and four soldiers were killed in the southeastern province.

Separately, gunmen killed three people in the Yemeni capital in an attack targeting university professor Ismail Al-Wazir, who was lightly wounded, a security official said.

Another official had wrongfully identified the man attacked as the head of a constitution-drafting committee who has the same name.

The assailants, who were in two vehicles, opened fire at a convoy carrying Wazir, an Islamic law professor at the University of Sanaa, the security official said.

Medical and security officials said the professor was lightly wounded and his son and two of his bodyguards were killed.

Witnesses said that the attackers fled after the assault.