The announcement came a day after Washington said US President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser had pressed Yemen to step up its efforts against the militant group.
The elite units are to be established in the provinces of Shabwa, Abyan, Hadramaut and Maarib and will be trained to confront Al-Qaeda and help "eradicate the scourge of terrorism", the Yemeni Interior Ministry said on its website.
On Friday, the White House said John Brennan, an Obama aide at the center of US intelligence efforts to thwart attacks by militants, had spoken with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Brennan called to "emphasize the importance of taking forceful action against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in order to thwart its plans to carry out terrorist attacks in Yemen as well as in other countries, including in the US homeland," the White House said.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which is based in Yemen, has emerged as a major international security concern since it claimed responsibility for last December's botched attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound aircraft.
Brennan said last week that US-Yemen relations had been strained by Washington's desire for a quicker pace of economic and political reforms, which it hopes would slow recruitment by militants in the country.
Relations have also been tested by WikiLeaks' disclosure of State Department cables alleging President Saleh had offered to mask US strikes in Yemen on Al-Qaeda targets.
The fight against Al-Qaeda suffered in 2009 when Yemen's government diverted a counterterrorism unit, which was funded and trained by the United States and Britain, to its war against northern rebels, according to other leaked US diplomatic cables.
A Yemeni official said Saturday that a soldier moonlighting as a motor-bike taxi operator in the south of the country was shot dead by a passenger in another suspected ambush by Al-Qaeda militants.
The killing took place in Zinjibar, capital of Abyan province, on Friday, the security official said. The soldier, he added, had picked up a passenger and had taken him to the suburb, where the passenger shot him dead.
In the past six months, 28 suicide attacks by bike-borne militants have killed 15 officials in Abyan alone, the province that has become an Al-Qaeda bastion. Officials say extremists have carried out similar attacks in other provinces.
With motorbike hit-and-run shootings also on the rise, the authorities in October ordered some 2,000 two-wheelers off the streets of Abyan and enforced restrictions on their use in other areas.
