Al-Qaida assassinates Yemeni intelligence officer

Sanaa, July 21 (Xinhua-ANI): Al-Qaida gunmen shot dead a Yemeni intelligence officer in the southern province of al-Bayda, Yemen's defence ministry said on Friday.

"Officer Ghazi Saeed Abdullah of the Political Security Agency was gunned down in al-Bayda's town of Radda late on Thursday by two al-Qaida terrorists who managed to flee on a motorbike," the ministry said in a statement on its website.

On Thursday, al-Qaida militants killed a security officer in the southern port city of Aden by attaching a magnetic bomb on his car, just one day after the group assassinated another high- ranking security official in neighboring province of Shabwa, according to police sources.

The latest assassinations against Yemeni security personnel began last month after a U.S.-backed military offensive drove the militants out of several southern cities and claimed a major victory against the al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

A week after the government announced its victory in early June, the al-Qaida carried out a suicide bombing in the southern port city of Aden on June 18 that killed the commander of Yemen's southern military region and it also launched a suicide attack in the capital Sanaa on July 11 that killed more than 20 police cadets. (Xinhua-ANI)