Eleven people including seven military personnel were killed in a suspected Al-Qaeda attack on Yemeni intelligence headquarters in the southern port city of Aden yesterday, officials said.

The higher security committee, in an official statement, said preliminary investigations "indicate that the criminal attack carries the marks of the Al-Qaeda terror network," the state news agency Saba reported.

It said three women and a seven-year-old boy were also killed in the clashes between the building guards and the assailants.

Earlier in the day, medical sources told AFP that 10 security personnel and three women cleaners were killed and at least 12 other people wounded.

The statement said 'terrorists' stormed the main gate of the building at around 7 a.m. yesterday, using grenades and gunfire to attack guards, also shooting at women and children near the building.

It made no reference to reports by local officials that the assailants succeeded in freeing an unspecified number of suspected Al-Qaeda members from the security building.

Witnesses said the assailants "were seen leaving the building in a bus, taking people who had been detained there with them," in what appeared to be a co-ordinated and well-planned operation.

There were no casualties among the attackers, the witnesses said.

The security committee vowed that the 'terrorists' will be chased and brought before justice.

Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, has witnessed numerous attacks claimed by Al-Qaeda on foreign missions, tourist sites and oil installations.

In October 2000, militants in an explosive-packed high-speed boat blew a hole in the side of American warship the USS Cole in Aden, killing 17 sailors.

Two years later, the French-registered 500,000-tonne supertanker Limburg was damaged by another bomb-laden boat in an attack also attributed to Al-Qaeda, in the southeast port of Ash-Shir, east of Aden.