US, UK close Yemen embassies over Al-Qaeda threats

American military and intelligence officials said they first picked up warnings of imminent attacks about three weeks ago, using information obtained from enhanced intelligence-sharing established with Yemen last year.

The information pointed to four suicide bombers headed to Sana, the Yemeni capital, to attack Western targets, possibly the American and British Embassies. Military strikes thwarted those attacks, the officials say. On Monday, diplomats quoted by Reuters said that the embassies would remain closed for a second day.

President Obama’s counterterrorism chief, John O. Brennan, said in an array of Sunday television appearances that there were only “disparate bits and pieces of information” available to intelligence agencies about the suspect in the plane case, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. “There was no smoking gun piece of intelligence out there that said he was a terrorist,” Mr. Brennan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”