ADEN: Yemeni Defense Minister Mohammed Nasser Ahmad and two senior security officers escaped unhurt when their convoy was ambushed on Friday by Al-Qaeda fighters in the south, a military source said.

Ahmad, intelligence chief Ali Hassan Al-Ahmadi and military police chief Awad Majwar Al-Awlaqi were traveling from Abyan province to Shabwa province, when they came under fire, the source said.

The source said none of the top brass was hurt in the attack that came as they were returning from a trip to monitor an ongoing army offensive against jihadis in Yemen’s restive south.

Clashes erupted after the ambush and lasted 15 minutes, the source said.

It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties among the assailants.

The defense minister, in a statement published earlier Friday, vowed to crush Al-Qaeda fighters in Yemen.

The defense minister had faced at least five assassination attempts since December 2011, when Yemen’s new government was formed after a power transfer deal under which long-ruling president Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down.

The attack came hours after a night time operation in the capital, in which security forces killed an Al-Qaeda commander suspected of masterminding a wave of kidnap bids targeting Western diplomats.

Hours later, a bombing in Sanaa’s diplomatic neighborhood wounded 11 police officers.

The ground offensive began on April 29 in Shabwa, Abyan and Baida provinces, where a wave of US drone strikes killed scores of suspected Al-Qaeda militants last month.

On Thursday, the army said it entered the town of Azzan, the second largest in Shabwa and a major stronghold of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which is seen by the United States as the network’s deadliest franchise.

In a separate incident on Friday, four Yemeni soldiers were killed and three wounded in an ambush by suspected Al-Qaeda fighters in the central Yemeni province of Al-Bayda, local tribal sources told Reuters.

Meanwhile, Yemeni forces have killed two foreign Al-Qaeda fighters — a Saudi and a Dagestani — and captured two French citizens of Tunisian origin also belonging to the group, state media said Friday.

Saudi Turki Abdelrahman and explosives expert Timur Al-Dagestani were killed in the southern Shabwa province, where the army is pressing an offensive, the reports said.

The suspected French jihadis were arrested trying to flee the country from an unnamed airport, the reports said.