Intelligence officer killed in south Yemen

Suspected Al-Qaeda militants have killed an intelligence officer in south Yemen, after a jihadist leader died in a U.S. drone strike, a local official announced on Saturday.

Colonel Hassan Ali Mansouri died on Friday evening in Labous, in the province of Lahj, when gunmen opened fire on him, ‘killing him on the spot,’ the source said.

Men from the tribe to which Mansouri belonged retaliated, killing one of the assailants and overpowering two others.

Earlier on Friday a U.S. drone strike killed Qaeed al-Dhahab, a military chief of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, in the southern province of Bayda.

He was the latest victim in a string of attacks targeting what the U.S. considers the extremist group's most dangerous branch, in eastern, southern and southeastern Yemen.

The militants took advantage of a decline in central government control during a 2011 uprising that forced Yemen's veteran president Ali Abdullah Saleh from power to seize large swathes of territory across the south.

They were driven out of these areas in June last year and have been increasingly weakened mainly due to U.S. drone attacks, but still carry out hit-and-run attacks against security forces.