Five soldiers were killed on Tuesday in a terrorist attack at their military checkpoint in Yemen's southeastern province of Hadramout, a provincial police source said.

The armed attack took place at dawn when suspected al-Qaida gunmen attacked the army outpost at the village of Borrom in the western part of Mukalla, the provincial capital of Hadramout, the local source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The assailants indiscriminately fired rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) at the soldiers who were manning the Borrom key checkpoint, the source said.

Hours later, reinforcement troops arrived at the site and found the bodies of the soldiers scattered around the military outpost, he added.

A local government official confirmed the incident to Xinhua saying that some of the soldiers were kidnapped following the attack in the western suburbs of Mukalla, without giving an exact number.

According to doctors in Hadramout's hospital, so far five bodies have been taken to hospital and the commander of the military outpost was among the dead.

Last week, gunmen suspected to be al-Qaida members invaded the headquarters of the Fourth Military Region in the port city of Aden, leaving at least 16 people killed.

Militants of the Yemen-based al-Qaida offshoot were blamed by the government for a series of assassinations and armed attacks, mostly in the country's southern regions.

The al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which emerged in January 2009, is considered the most strategic threat to the Yemeni government and neighboring oil-rich Saudi Arabia.