Security Official: Yemen Foiled Plot against Embassies

Yemen's security forces have foiled a militant plot to attack embassies in Sanaa, state news agency SABA said on Wednesday, just days after the army forced al-Qaida out of their bastions in the country's south.

"Security forces have managed to foil a terror plot targeting foreign embassies in the capital," SABA news agency said citing a top security official.

According to the unnamed official, "three suspects armed with weapons, explosives and maps showing the location of foreign embassies," were detained.

He said the residences of "military commanders and other important people" were also marked on the seized maps.

The report comes two days after a suicide bomber killed Salem Ali Qoton, the army general who spearheaded a month-long offensive against al-Qaida in Yemen's Abyan and Shabwa provinces in the south.

The offensive, launched on May 12, ended more than a year of al-Qaida control in a string of towns and villages in the troubled south and east.

The jihadists are believed to have fled to the lawless mountainous regions of the eastern Hadramawt province.

In May, an al-Qaida suicide bomber blew himself up in the middle of a battalion of soldiers rehearsing for an army parade in Sanaa, killing more than a 100 people and wounding dozens of others.