Suspected al-Qaida gunmen kill colonel in Yemen's Aden

Suspected al-Qaida gunmen opened fire and shot dead a colonel with the military intelligence agency in Yemen's southern port city of Aden Wednesday afternoon, a government official told Xinhua.

"Hooded gunmen suspected of belonging to the al-Qaida terrorist group opened fire from silenced weapons and killed Colonel Mohamed al-Azhrany near his house in Aden province," the local government official said on condition of anonymity.

He said that the attack took place when the colonel was coming back from his office at the 120th Air Defense Brigade in Aden.

Witnesses said the colonel was killed on spot, and the attackers fled away.

Yemeni military officials have blamed al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) for a series of assassinations and armed attacks, mostly in the country's southern regions.

Yemen, an impoverished Arab country, has been gripped by one of the most active regional al-Qaida insurgencies in the Middle East.

The AQAP, which emerged in January 2009 and also known locally as Ansar al-Sharia, had claimed responsibility for a number of attacks on some Western countries.

The al-Qaida offshoot said last month that it was behind the rampage that claimed 12 lives at the French newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris.

In 2009, the AQAP claimed responsibility for an attempt to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner by sending Nigerian bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who visited Yemen and had been trained by the militants there.

In January, Washington said it has not suspended anti-terror operations against the al-Qaida activities in Yemen following Yemen's Shiite Houthi group took over the country's capital Sanaa. Endit