WASHINGTON (AP) -- The State Department has banned U.S. diplomats and other government personnel from all Western hotels in Yemen because of the threat of terrorism. Officials said they were not aware of any specific, credible threat to Americans in the Red Sea country but noted a continuing stream of information that has prompted the U.S. Embassy in San'a to issue two terror-related warnings this week alone. "As a result of continuing threat information, the U.S. Embassy has placed all Western hotels in Yemen off limits to embassy personnel and visitors," it said in a notice sent to Americans in the country on Friday. On Monday, the embassy said in a notice that it "continues to receive threats against embassies, Western hotels, and Western interests in San'a and Aden" and warned Americans to take additional security precautions. Neither notice offered details of the threats. Yemen poses a vexing terrorism problem for the United States. It has large swaths of ungoverned territory and is Osama bin Laden's ancestral home. A top National Intelligence Council official said in August that Yemen is rapidly re-emerging as a jihadist battleground and is a potential base of operations for large international terrorist attacks. Yemen has been the site of numerous al-Qaida attacks on U.S. interests, beginning with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the Gulf of Aden harbor that killed 17 American sailors. Most recently, in September, a six-member suicide squad, later linked by a Yemeni security official to al-Qaida, assaulted the U.S. Embassy in San'a, killing 13 people, including an 18-year-old American woman of Yemeni origin. It was the deadliest direct attack on a U.S. Embassy in a decade. The Yemeni official said the six were trained at al-Qaida camps in the southern Yemeni provinces of Hadramut and Marib and that three of them had recently returned from Iraq. Al-Qaida is also blamed for a March mortar attack against the embassy and two April attacks against the president's compound. The extent of Yemen's problem with extremists and the shortcomings of its counterterrorism efforts are underscored by the fact that Yemenis make up the largest population of detainees - at least 108 of 270 - held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Bush administration has sought to return dozens of these prisoners to Yemen but has been unable to get assurances from the Yemeni government that they will be held or rehabilitated. Yemen considers itself a strong partner with the United States in the fight against terrorism, and U.S. officials say Yemeni intelligence services have been helpful since the Cole attack. But the poor country on the southern tip of the Arabian peninsula has a weak central government and a powerful tribal system. Yemen also has a history of being unable to hang onto terrorist suspects. U.S. officials grumble about what they call lax detention policies. Seventeen suspects in the Cole bombing were arrested; ten of them escaped in 2003. One of the primary suspects in the attack, Jamal al-Badawi, escaped jail in 2004. He was taken back into custody last fall under pressure from Washington. --- Associated Press writer Pamela Hess contributed to this report. © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our .
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