The Yemeni-based al-Qaida wing said it carried out the suicide bombing attack against a provincial headquarters of the Republican Guard early Saturday in the southeast province of al-Bayda.

"The al-Qaida carried out a 'martyrdom' operation by using a booby-trapped car targeted early today (Saturday) the headquarters of the Republican Guard in al-Bayda province, which resulted in destroying the whole building of the headquarters and killing all soldiers inside it," the group said in a brief statement received by Xinhua.

"This attack is a response to the troops' crimes," it added.

Earlier, a provincial security official told Xinhua that three suicide bombers onboard an explosive-laden car broke into the main gate of the Republican Guard camp in al-Bayda on Saturday morning.

He said that two suicide bombers then blew up the booby-trapped car inside the camp and killed themselves, while the third one opened fire on the soldiers near the camp's gate and was later arrested.

According to the official, the attack did not kill or injure any soldier but destroyed large parts of the barracks and smashed windows of several houses of civilians near the camp.

The arrested attacker was identified as "Ahmed Abdulkadir al- Humaikany" and was seriously injured before he was arrested. "Al- Humaikany admitted to us (security investigators) that the al- Qaida wing, Ansra al-Sharia, is behind the attack," the official told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The attack against the Republican Guard was the second of its kind in a week after a suicide car bombing killed nearly 30 soldiers in the southern province of Hadramout.

Al-Bayda province, some 170 km southeast of the capital Sanaa, has witnessed in the past two months a remarkable progress by the Yemeni government against Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of the Islamic Law), a local arm of the al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Since late January 2011 when protests erupted against then Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the AQAP has been working to bolster their presence in the country's remote regions.

The AQAP, entrenching itself mainly in Yemen's southern provinces of Abyan and Shabwa, is on the terrorist list of the United States, which considers it as an increasing threat to its national security.