sana’a: Two of the top security officials in Yemen’s eastern province of Wadi Hadramut were killed in an ambush yesterday that also took the lives of three other security men, an official said.

“Brigadier General Ali Salem Al Ameri, security chief in Wadi Hadramut, and Ahmed Bawazeir, the head of state security in the area, and three security men were killed in an ambush,” the official said. The attack took place at 3pm (1200 GMT) in the area of Khashm Al Ein, in the district of Al Abr, in the northwest of Hadramut.

The five were travelling in a single car when they came under a hail of bullets, a witness who was in a car behind them said.

Ameri, who was driving, swerved and collided with a lorry.

“The car went up in flames. The bodies were charred,” he added.

The men were returning from a visit to Wadayah, a border crossing into Saudi Arabia, said the witness, who was on the same trip.

The official said he “would not rule out the possibility that Al Qaeda might be behind the attack.”

Last year, Hadramut was the scene of at least 18 attacks by Al Qaeda militants on security installations and patrols. In one, a suicide car bomber targeted a security compound in the town of Sayun that killed a policeman and wounded 17 people.

Yemen, the ancestral land of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, has also witnessed a number of attacks claimed by Al Qaeda on foreign missions, tourist sites and oil installations.

In October 2000, Al Qaeda militants on a small explosives-packed boat blew a hole in an American warship, the USS Cole, in the southern port of Aden, killing 17 US sailors.