Yemen’s Interior Ministry has published a list of 154 names of the most wanted Al-Qa’ida terrorists in the country.
The updated list includes photographs and a brief description of the wanted people and is being distributed to security agencies throughout the country, as well as security personnel at airports, seaports, land crossings, civil administration offices and passport controls.
The list includes 116 names that were already on a previous register.
Around half of those on the list are Yemen nationals, while the other half are Saudis.
The list is part of ‘Sanaa’s efforts to clamp down on terrorism in Yemen. The ministry is urging the public to cooperate with the security forces in pursuing terrorists and notifying the police about the whereabouts of terror suspects.
Yemen announced that 16 terror suspects were arrested last week.
Yemen handed over five Saudi Arabian nationals to the Saudi authorities on Saturday. The five were wanted by Riyadh in connection with terrorism and acts of sabotage, news reports said, and were drawn to what was called “deviant ideologies,” a reference to Al-Qa’ida.
Saudi Arabia has put hundreds of militants through a rehabilitation program, which includes education by clerics to help the participants discard their terror affiliation. The program also offers financial help to start a new life.
In a video message posted on the Internet in January, the local Al-Qa’ida branches in Saudi Arabia and Yemen announced they had merged into "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula."
Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the Middle East and is perceived as a safe haven for extremist militants, due to the lack of government control over parts of the country.
The country has witnessed dozens of terror attacks against foreign nationals, foreign interests and oil installations over the past eight years.
Sixteen people, including six assailants, were killed in an attack on the U.S. embassy in the Yemenite capital last September when two car bombs exploded near the embassy.
This was the deadliest attack against American interests in Yemen since the attack on the USS Cole in Aden in 2000 left 17 U.S. sailors dead.
Al-Qa’ida has deep roots in Yemen, Osama Bin Laden’s ancestral home. The country was also a key source for recruitment during the early years of the network’s fight against the Soviet presence in Afghanistan.
As well as an ongoing threat of Islamist terror, government forces have been engaged in a prolonged conflict with the radical Al-Houthi clan in the north since 2004.