SANAA, Sept 16: Four members of Al Qaeda who were planning attacks in Yemen’s capital Sanaa were arrested on Saturday in possession of powerful explosives, the interior minister said.

“The security services have today arrested in Sanaa a cell of four terrorists with links to Al Qaeda who were planning terrorist attacks” in the capital, Interior Minister General Rashad al-Alimi told a news conference.

The four men, he added, were found with 200 kilograms of explosives and were likely connected to foiled twin suicide bombings on Friday against oil installations.

The bombers, in explosives-laden cars, tried to attack an oil refinery in Maarib, a lawless tribal area in the desert east of the capital Sanaa, and a Canadian-run terminal in the south-eastern port of Dhabba, on the Gulf of Aden.

Four bombers and a security guard were killed when Yemeni security forces foiled the attacks, officials said.

Those attacks came just days after Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man Ayman al-Zawahiri warned that the Gulf and Israel would be the next targets of Al Qaeda, in a video message coinciding with the fifth anniversary on Monday of the Sept 11 attacks in the United States.

Minister Alimi told Saturday’s news conference the arrests were the result of a security plan put in place after the escape in February of 23 Al Qaeda members from a detention centre in Sanaa.—AFP