ADEN, Yemen, Sept. 23 (Xinhua) -- Unknown gunmen opened fire and shot dead an official of Yemen's Education Ministry in the southern port city of Aden on Sunday, a security official told Xinhua.

The security official, who asked to remain anonymous, said that "masked gunmen assassinated Ramzi Sagheer, Director of a private school and a member of the education department in Aden province."

The source said that the assailants targeted Ramzi with a barrage of bullets fired from silenced weapons while he was leaving his own private school in Mansourah district of Aden.

"Ramzi was an active official in the educational field and participated in many campaigns about the importance of teaching women in Yemen," the security source said.

Members of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) arrived at the scene and launched an investigation.

No claim of responsibility for the assassination incident was immediately made.

However, police sources in Aden blamed militants of the Yemen-based al-Qaida branch (AQAP) and the Islamic State group for being behind such attacks.

Considered Yemen's temporary capital, Aden is where the Saudi-backed government has been based since 2015.

For the past two years, the AQAP and other extremist groups have been active in southern Yemen.

The impoverished Arab country has been locked into a civil war since late 2014, when the Shiite Houthi rebels overran much of the country and seized all northern provinces, including the capital Sanaa.

Saudi Arabia is leading an Arab military coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015 to support the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after Houthi rebels forced him into exile.

The United Nations has listed Yemen as the country of the world's most serious humanitarian crisis, where 7 million Yemenis are on the brink of famine and cholera has caused more than 2,300 deaths.