Armed separatists killed two Yemeni soldiers and wounded another on Saturday in an attack on a military checkpoint in southern Lahij province, a security official said.
Militants from the southern movement opened fire on the checkpoint in the area of Al Milah, close to the town of Habilayn which has been under the control of southern gunmen for weeks, the official told AFP.
Sources in the movement confirmed the attack, adding one assailant was wounded by army fire and taken into hospital in Habilayn.
In addition to grappling with an increasingly violent southern separatist movement, the Sanaa government is struggling against a growing presence of Al Qaeda fighters in the south.
On Friday, 10 soldiers were killed in two separate ambushes which targeted Army convoys in the restive province of Abyan.
South Yemen was independent from the 1967 British withdrawal from Aden until the region united with the north in 1990.
The south seceded in 1994, sparking a short-lived civil war that ended with it being overrun by northern troops.