7 January 2010 / AP, SANAA
Yemeni security forces arrested three suspected al-Qaeda militants from a cell that the US has said was linked to a plot against the American or other embassies, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.
The arrests were the latest move in Yemen’s US-backed crackdown on al-Qaeda’s offshoot here. The US and British embassies closed for two days this week, and other Western embassies took security precautions because of a threats that al-Qaeda was planning an imminent attack. The two missions reopened on Tuesday, after the United States said an assault by Yemeni security forces on an al-Qaeda cell northeast of the capital a day earlier had “addressed” the threat. In those clashes, Yemeni forces attacked a group of al-Qaeda fighters moving in the mountains in the Arhab region. The troops were aiming to capture al-Qaeda’s suspected leader in the area, Mohammed Ahmed al-Hanaq, and a relative Nazeeh al-Hanaq, the ministry said. They escaped, but two fighters with them were killed and several others were wounded.
