SANAA, Oct. 25 (Xinhua) -- Five soldiers were killed and another three, including a senior security commander, were seriously injured in an ambush early Sunday in southern Yemen, official SABA news agency reported on its website.

    The attack was carried out by "saboteurs" while a security patrol was accompanying an ambulance in a humanitarian duty to transfer body of a soldier killed in the current war against Houthi Shiite rebels in northern province of Saada, said SABA.

    The patrol was ambushed while returning from Dhale city, 220 km south of the capital Sanaa, said the report.

    The southern part of Yemen has witnessed repeated clashes and rising tensions between the government and the rebel Southern Movement that calls for the independence of the south, which was an independent state until it unified with the north in 1990, accusing the government of bias to the north and ignoring development in the south.

    Meanwhile, the Yemeni government faced another insurgence in north by Shiite rebels called Houthis whom it accused of attempting to revive the cleric system of rule known as Zaidi imamate.