‘Qaeda attack’ kills 20 Yemen soldiers

ADEN: Gunmen killed 20 Yemeni soldiers in a dawn attack on a checkpoint Monday, most of them in their sleep, in the latest in a wave of deadly violence blamed on Al-Qaeda.

The assault came in the eastern province of Hadramawt were the security forces have suffered repeated losses which prompted President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi to fire his interior minister earlier this month.

"Twenty soldiers were killed in the armed attack on an army checkpoint" near Reida, 135 kilometres (85 miles) east of the provincial capital Mukalla, the official Saba news agency reported.

The assailants drove up to the checkpoint in a convoy of vehicles, raking the soldiers on duty with automatic weapons before hurling grenades at an adjacent tent where the majority of the contingent were asleep, a military source told AFP.

The attack "bore all the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda," the source added.

Yemen branch, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), is viewed by Washington as its most dangerous and has claimed repeated deadly attacks, some of them in the heart of the capital Sanaa.

A military helicopter landed at the scene of the attack in the middle of the day to recover the bodies of the slain soldiers while a fighter aircraft patrolled overhead, witnesses said. (AFP)