The Interior Ministry promised a reward of 20 million riyals ($100,000) for anyone providing information leading to the capture of any of the “terrorist extremists.”

It identified them as Amin Abdullah Abdul Rahman Al-Othmani, Bashir Mohammed Ahmed Al-Hlaisi, Showqi Ali Ahmed Al-Baadani, Abdul Elah Ali Qasem Al-Mesbahi, Abdul Hamid Ahmed Mohammed Al-Hubaishi, Mohammed Ali Abdullah Al-Nashri, Musleh Abdullah Ahmed Al-Hlaisi and Yusef Ahmed Muthana Zayud.

The ministry did say why the men are wanted but an official told Saba they had been recruited by Al-Qaeda militants “obsessed with murder and destruction.”

The official warned against giving them shelter or withholding information on their whereabouts.

Al-Qaeda gunmen ambushed a military convoy and killed three soldiers in southern Yemen on Saturday, a security official said, two days after a similar ambush killed five soldiers in the same region. “Three soldiers were killed and at least two were wounded when Al-Qaeda ambushed a military convoy... heading east from Zinjibar (Abyan's provincial capital) toward the town of Mudia,” the official said. The attackers set roadside bombs and destroyed two military vehicles, he said.  The air force responded by bombing the attackers to give the convoy cover to continue its journey to Mudia, the official added. A similar ambush on Thursday killed five people including one officer and wounded eight others near Mudia. In a related development, Australia lifted its travel warning for Yemen to its highest possible level, saying there was a “very high threat of terrorist attack” in the Arabian Peninsula's poorest nation.

The updated travel advisory released late Friday comes just days after United States President Barack Obama warned that Al-Qaeda was pursuing a “murderous agenda” in the increasingly violent state.

“The overall level of the advice has increased to 'do not travel' because of the very high threat of terrorist attack,” Australia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.  The statement advised Australians against traveling to Yemen because of the volatile security situation and urged those already in the country to leave. “Terrorist attacks are likely and could occur at any time anywhere in Yemen with little or no warning,”

it said, adding that embassies and hotels could be targeted for suicide attacks.

Meanwhile, the interior minister said on Saturday a Frenchman murdered by a security guard in Yemen at the Austrian company where they worked was killed in a terrorist crime rather than for personal reasons as first claimed.

“The investigation has revealed that this was a terrorist crime, whose perpetrator had contacts with elements of Al-Qaeda,” official media quoted Motahar Rashad Al-Masri as saying.

Jacques Spagnolo, a contractor working for energy group OMV, was shot at the company's compound in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on October 6, the same day a British embassy car was targeted by a rocket attack that wounded one person.

Two days later, the Defense Ministry said security guard Hisham Mohammed Assem had probably acted for personal reasons in what was a criminal matter.