Gunmen killed 20 Yemeni soldiers in a dawn attack on a checkpoint Monday, most of them in their sleep, in the latest in a wave of deadly violence blamed on Al-Qaeda.

Gunmen killed 20 Yemeni soldiers in a dawn attack on a checkpoint Monday, most of them in their sleep, in the latest in a wave of deadly violence blamed on Al-Qaeda.

The assault came in the eastern province of Hadramawt were the security forces have suffered repeated losses which prompted President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi to fire his interior minister earlier this month.

"Twenty soldiers were killed in the armed attack on an army checkpoint" near Reida, 135 kilometers east of the provincial capital Mukalla, the official Saba news agency reported.

The assailants drove up to the checkpoint in a convoy of vehicles, raking the soldiers on duty with automatic weapons before hurling grenades at an adjacent tent where the majority of the contingent were asleep, a military source told AFP.

The attack "bore all the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda," the source added.
A military helicopter landed at the scene of the attack in the middle of the day to recover the bodies of the slain soldiers while a fighter aircraft patrolled overhead, witnesses said.

New Interior Minister Abdo Tareb ordered the province's security chief General Fahmi Mahrus and its special forces commander detained for questioning over how the attackers had been able to overwhelm the checkpoint, Saba added.

Tareb was appointed on March 8 when President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi fired his predecessor Abdelqader Qahtan for failing to improve the "below-par" performance of the security forces.