Gunmen killed three soldiers in an attack on an army checkpoint in Yemen's restive southeast Thursday, a military official told AFP.

Several other soldiers were wounded in the attack that took place at the entrance of Shahr, a town in the Hadramawt province, an Al-Qaeda stronghold.

Witnesses said gunmen in a car opened fire at the checkpoint and then fled, adding that the army had sent reinforcements to the scene of the attack.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has been blamed for most of the increasingly common hit-and-run strikes on military personnel and officials.

The jihadist group rarely claims responsibility for such attacks, but said it was behind a brazen daylight assault on the Yemeni defence ministry that killed 56 people earlier this month.

AQAP took advantage of a decline in central government control during Yemen's 2011 uprising to seize large swathes of territory across the south.

The militants were driven back in June 2012 and the group has been further weakened by US drone strikes.