Police in Aden arrested a man who was caught placing a plastic bag containing 1,800 grams of dynamite in the city's "vital installations," the Interior Ministry said.

Following the arrest on Saturday night, officers detained six accomplices based on his confession, and are still on the hunt for another two members of the group suspected of "sabotage." Earlier this month, twin bomb blasts rocked a sports centre in Aden, killing one person and wounding several others.

The football competition involving Yemen, Iraq and six Gulf monarchies is to be held from Nov. 22 to Dec. 5 in Aden and neighboring Abyan province, which has seen an increasing number of Al-Qaeda attacks. Police in Yemen’s southern city of Mukalla released on Saturday night a new list of nine Al-Qaeda suspects, including one Saudi national, Abdullah Faraj Al-Juair.

In a joint meeting with Hadramout’s intelligence service police and local authority, security service announced a bounty of 20 million Yemeni riyal (almost $100, 000) for providing information that could lead to the capture of theses terrorists.

The meeting followed the assassination of Col. Abdul Aziz Mubarek Boabes on Friday night.

Yemen said on Sunday it had launched a manhunt for Al-Qaeda in its southern Shabwa province, the same day a US-born cleric sought by Washington and thought to be hiding in that area appeared in an online video.

Late Saturday, US-based terrorism monitoring service SITE Institute released a video tape showing Anwar Al-Awlaki sitting at a table in traditional Yemeni garb and delivering a lecture.

Yemeni security forces and local tribes began combing the mountainous Said district in Shabwa for Al-Qaeda militants on Saturday morning, a security official in Shabwa said. Members of Awlaki's own tribe were helping with the search, the official said.

The Shabwa governor and the Awlaki clan have signed a deal under which they would "expel Al-Qaeda elements from their territories and mount a joint operation with the army (to do so)," he added.

On Oct. 11, four people were killed after two bombs exploded at a sports stadium in Aden. The trial of 10 suspects in the attack began in Aden on Sunday. SITE said the video featuring Awlaki, which was less than two minutes long, had been posted on a website used by militants. The footage appeared to be a fragment of a longer recording, the date of which was unclear.

Washington accuses Awlaki of being a leading Al-Qaeda figure with links to a failed bombing of a US-bound plane in December 2009 and to an army major who went on a shooting spree that killed 13 people last year at Fort Hood in Texas.

— With input from agencies