ADEN, Yemen, May 16 (Xinhua) -- An well-known Yemeni academician was assassinated in her house in the southern port city of Aden before dawn Wednesday, a police official told Xinhua.

Najat Ali Muqbil, dean of the Health Sciences College at Aden University, was killed by a group of masked gunmen in military uniform, who broke into her house in the neighborhood of Enmaa and opened fire with automatic rifiles, the local police source said on condition of anonymity.

Two members of her family also died in the incident, the source added.

Within hours after the shooting, the police sealed off all neighborhood entrances and began a building-by-building search for the killers.

One of the suspects has been arrested and moved to the Criminal Investigation Department for further interrogation, the police official revealed.

Witnesses said medics have transferred the bodies of the dean and her family members to the morgue.

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

For the past two years, the al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and other terrorist groups, including the Islamic State, have been active in southern Yemen.

The impoverished Arab country has been locked into a civil war since late 2014, when the Iranian-backed 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 seven million Yemenis on the brink of famine and cholera has caused more than 2,000 deaths.?