**The US and UK have kept their embassies in Yemen shut for another day over what officials call threats from al-Qaeda.**Diplomatic staff are reportedly reviewing the security situation and will reassess the closures on Tuesday.
The US government has accused Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula of being behind last month’s attempt to blow up a US airliner over Detroit.
Meanwhile, all travellers flying into the US are to be subjected to tightened security measures, officials have said.
Airport staff will now carry out full body checks on people from countries which the US considers to be state-sponsors of terrorism - Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria, plus Yemen, Nigeria and Pakistan.
Passengers travelling from other countries will be checked at random.
‘Security review’
The US and UK embassies remained closed for a second day on Monday, with officials citing concerns about an imminent attack.
YEMEN FACTS
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Population: 23.6 million (UN, 2009)
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Capital: Sanaa
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Language: Arabic
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Major religion: Islam
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Oil exports: $1.5bn/24.5m barrels (Jan-Oct 2009)
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Income per capita: US $950 (World Bank, 2008)
Attack stokes Yemen terror fears
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“The embassy is still closed again today… We are continuing to make the security review,” a US diplomat told the Reuters news agency.
The Yemeni authorities have meanwhile tightened security measures at Sanaa’s airport, as well as around several other embassies.
On Sunday, the US embassy said it had closed in response to “ongoing threats by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to attack American interests in Yemen”.
The UK followed suit, with a Foreign Office spokeswoman saying the embassy had been closed “for security reasons”.
Hours earlier, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the BBC: “This is a new type of threat and it is from a new source which is obviously Yemen”.
The US embassy was the target of an attack in September 2008 in which 19 people died, including a young American woman. The attack was blamed on AQAP.
‘Tighten the noose’
On Sunday, the US deputy national security adviser for homeland security and counter-terrorism said there were “indications that al-Qaeda is planning to carry out an attack against a target inside of Sanaa, possibly our embassy”.
John Brennan told ABC the group had “several hundred members” in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and was posing an increasing threat.
“We know that they have been targeting our embassy, our embassy personnel,” he added.
Mr Brennan said Anwar al-Awlaki seemed to be linked to the bomb plot
Profile: Anwar al-Awlaki
Last week, AQAP urged Muslims to help in “killing every crusader who works at their embassies or other places” and said it was behind the failed attempt to destroy the Northwest Airlines Airbus A330 on Christmas Day.
Speaking separately to CNN, Mr Brennan said there were “indications” that a radical American cleric of Yemeni origin had links both to the Nigerian accused of the bomb plot, and the man accused of the Fort Hood shootings in November.
He said the cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, had had direct contact with Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab while he was being trained by AQAP operatives last year.
It was clear, he said, that Mr Awlaki had also been in touch with Nidal Malik Hasan, the US Army major charged with shooting dead 13 people at Fort Hood.
Since going on the run in Yemen in 2007, Mr Awlaki’s overt endorsement of violence as a religious duty in his sermons and on the internet is thought to have inspired recruits to Islamist militancy.
On Saturday, the head of US Central Command, Gen David Petraeus, visited Yemen’s President Ali Abdallah Saleh to pledge US support for its fight with al-Qaeda and would double its counter-terrorism aid.
Yemeni officials meanwhile said they had sent more troops to hunt down al-Qaeda militants in the provinces of Abyan, Baida and Shabwa, and “tighten the noose around extremists” in the country.
Correspondents say the security situation in Yemen is complicated by an abundance of firearms, an insurgency in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.
But the prospects of re-asserting central government authority over the lawless areas where al-Qaeda is based look, in the opinion of some analysts, remote - even with beefed-up American support.
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