Al-Qaida militants killed two intelligence officers, and four soldiers in three separate attacks on Sunday in Yemen's restive provinces of Abyan, Hadramout and Marib, police sources said.

Colonel Abdul-Hamid al-Sharabi of the Political Security Agency was shot dead by al-Qaida gunmen on motorcycles in Zinjibar, the provincial capital of Abyan, some 427 km south of the capital Sanaa.

Another officer of the Political Security Agency, Colonel Shaif Hussein, was gunned down by armed al-Qaida militants in Sayon city in Hadramout province, about 794 km southeast of Sanaa.

Elsewhere in Marib province, nearly 173 km northeast of Sanaa, an army officer and three soldiers of the Republican Guard onboard a military vehicle were killed on Sunday in an ambush set by gunmen of al-Qaida group, a provincial security official said.

The militants then seized the vehicle, which was carrying food for a military base in the province, and fled the scene, the official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

According to the statistics issued by the Interior Ministry late last year, a total of 178 security force members were killed in 2010, mostly in combats against al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and another 852 were injured.

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