ADEN: Two suspected militants shot dead a provincial military intelligence chief in Yemen yesterday, a security official said, the latest in a series of assassinations in the impoverished state's lawless south and east.

The gunmen opened fire from a motorbike, killing Col. Ahmed Abdulrazzaq, intelligence head in Yemen's Hadramawt Province, outside his home in Mukalla on the Arabian Sea.

Meanwhile, a Yemeni security official says five soldiers and two Al-Qaeda militants have been killed in fighting in the central town of Radda.

The official says the soldiers were killed yesterday when Al-Qaeda fighters attacked a military checkpoint in Radda.

Around 60 military and security officials have been assassinated in southern and eastern Yemen in the past two years after an insurgency sprang up.

Militants allied to Al-Qaeda took advantage of Yemen's political chaos and splits in the military during mass Arab Spring protests to seize control of some southern cities.

The protests unseated President Ali Abdullah Saleh and installed an interim government which, with the help of tribal militias, pushed the militants from cities they had captured.

However, fighting between militants and pro-government forces continues throughout rural areas of southern Yemen.