Yemen offers $25,000 for wanted al-Qaida members

SANAA - Yemen's higher security committee has offered a reward of $25,000 for those who give information leading to the arrest of 25 most wanted al-Qaida members, the official Saba news agency reported Tuesday.

"The move comes after information showed that those active militants have been planning to carry out terrorist acts against government, public and private facilities in the capital Sanaa and other Yemeni provinces in the upcoming days," it said in a statement carried by Saba.

The Yemeni government on Sunday boosted security presence around Western embassies in the capital as precautionary measures after the United States and some European countries closed their embassies in Sanaa over alert of possible attacks by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

The wanted list includes Ibrahim al-Rubaish, a Saudi national and former Guantanamo detainee who fled to Yemen in early 2009 and become AQAP's mufti.

AQAP was founded in January 2009 after the merger of Saudi and Yemeni branches.

The network is led by Yemeni militant Nasser al-Wuhayshi, who declared in July 2011 the group's allegiance to Ayman al-Zawahiri, head of the worldwide al-Qaida network after the killing of its founder Osama bin Laden in 2011.