During the Sunday incident, the assailant used an assault rifle to rake the army minibus with gunfire, said an army official.

Two women were among the dead while 12 other staff members were wounded.

"The bus was carrying doctors and nurses working for the military hospital in Aden," the official said.

Among the wounded was "a mother who was with her two children on board" the bus.

The official accused Al-Qaeda of plotting and executing the attack, which comes as the army presses an all-out offensive it launched against jihadi strongholds in Yemen's southern provinces of Shabwa and Abyan in late April.

The army says 500 Al-Qaeda militants have been killed in the army's latest operation, while 40 soldiers died and 100 others were wounded.

It is not the first time Yemeni medical personnel have been hit by Al-Qaeda. In December, members of the jihadi group carried out a brazen attack on a defense complex in Sanaa that killed 56 people, among them a number of medics, including seven foreigners.

On Friday, four Yemeni soldiers and five suspected Al-Qaeda militants were killed in two separate attacks in the south, military and local sources said.

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