ADEN, Yemen, May 18- Suspected al-Qaida gunmen shot dead a Yemeni intelligence officer on Friday night in the southeastern province of Hadramout, a government official told Saturday.Abdullah Rabaky, a colonel at the military intelligence agency in Hadrmout province, was gunned down when a militant on a motorcycle shot at his car, the local official said on condition of anonymity.
The drive-by shooting attack, which bears the hallmarks of an al-Qaida operation, occurred in a main street in Mukalla, the provincial capital of Hadramout, according to the official.
Witnesses near the scene told Xinhua anonymously that after killing the colonel, "a group of unknown gunmen attacked a military checkpoint in the same area and managed to escape."
Earlier this month, al-Qaida-associated gunmen killed three air force pilots who were travelling to a southern military air base in Lahj province.
Yemeni security services have repeatedly blamed militants of the Yemen-based al-Qaida offshoot for a series of grenade attacks, assassinations and explosions, mostly in the country's southern regions.
In January 2009, al-Qaida affiliates in Saudi Arabia and Yemen officially merged and formed al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula ( AQAP).
