A retired colonel and a police officer were killed in separate explosions on Thursday in east Yemen's Shabwa province, considered to be an Al-Qaeda stronghold, officials said.
The blasts in the mountainous As-Said region, 650 kilometres (400 miles) east of the capital, came four hours apart.
A local official told AFP the first attack was caused by a bomb placed in the car of Ahmed al-Makdhara, an officer in the judiciary police. He was wounded and his bodyguard was killed.
The official added that the attack "is probably the work of Al-Qaeda, whose members are being hunted in this part" of Shabwa.
Retired army colonel Nasser Saleh Salem al-Awlaqi was killed in the second explosion, also caused by a car bomb which wounded one of his relatives, Nasser al-Nubeh of the separatist Southern Movement told journalists.
The blast happened as they were heading for a village in the As-Said area for a secessionist meeting, Nubeh said.
Shabwa province was a former hideout of radical Muslim cleric and US-born Anwar al-Awlaqi, whose targeted killing has been authorised by President Barack Obama's administration.
Awlaqi rose to prominence last year after it emerged he had communicated extensively by email with Major Nidal Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist accused of opening fire on colleagues at Fort Hood, Texas, killing 13.
The imam has also been linked to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian student accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound flight with explosives in his underwear last December 25.
Copyright 2010  AFP Global Edition
