The Yemen-based branch of al-Qaida has offered a bounty for anyone who kills the U.S. ambassador to Yemen or an American soldier in the impoverished Arab state, a group that monitors Islamist websites said.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said it was offering 3 kilograms (more than 105 ounces) of gold for the killing of Ambassador Gerald Feierstein, the U.S. ambassador based in Sanaa, the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group said, citing an audio released by militants.

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AQAP also offered to pay 5 million rials ($23,350) to anyone who kills any American soldier in Yemen, it said.

Citing the audio, SITE said the offer was put out as being valid for six months and was made "to encourage our Muslim Ummah (nation), and to expand the circle of the jihad (holy war) by the masses."

Suspected al-Qaida attack kills 26

AQAP, made up mostly of militants from Yemen and Saudi Arabia, is regarded by the United States as the most dangerous branch of the network founded by Osama bin Laden.

In September, AQAP urged Muslims to step up protests and kill U.S. diplomats in Muslim countries over a film denigrating the Prophet Mohammad, which it said was another chapter in the "crusader wars" against Islam.

The film provoked an outcry among Muslims, who deem any depiction of the Prophet as blasphemous and triggered violent attacks on embassies in countries in Asia and the Middle East.

Four U.S. officials, including the ambassador to Libya, were killed in the aftermath. The Pentagon said it had sent a platoon of Marines to Yemen after demonstrators stormed the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa.

A U.S. ally, Yemen is struggling against challenges on many fronts since mass protests forced veteran leader Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down in February after decades in power.

Key al-Qaida figure killed

President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government is trying to re-establish order and unify the army.

Washington, which has pursued a campaign of assassination by drone and missile against suspected al-Qaida members, backed a military offensive in May to recapture areas of Abyan province. But militants have struck back with a series of bombings and killings.

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With the death in Pakistan of al-Qaida No. 2 Abu Yahya al-Libi in a Predator attack early Monday, the terrorist group’s highest councils once again face the daunting task of filling both a leadership void and selecting a next-generation jihadist capable of succeeding current leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

But despite the obvious dangers that go with a prominent al-Qaida post, counterterrorism experts inside and outside the U.S. government have identified at least five potential next-generation leaders -- three of them former U.S. residents and one an American citizen.

---

“It would be a mistake for anyone to conclude there is no one on the bench,” said one U.S. official familiar with counterterrorism strategy, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It’s a thinning bench, but there are still bad guys, with bad aspirations in al-Qaida’s core group in Pakistan.  However, these individuals are not as capable and don’t have the profile or following in the wider extremist movement that Abu Yahya or his predecessor, Abu Atiyah, had.”

Deputy al-Qaida leader killed in Pakistan, White House confirms

But Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counter Terrorism Center and an NBC News analyst, said the candidates to move up into al-Qaida’s senior ranks in the wake of al-Libi’s death all lack his seasoning.

“The real answer is NONE of them are serious by comparison with Abu Yahya across a very wide range of skills and respect,” he said.

Indeed, the U.S. has killed four of the five al-Qaida operatives identified as possible successors to Osama bin Laden at the time of his death on May 1, 2011. The only one who remains alive is Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s longtime No. 2 who assumed command shortly after bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs in Abbottabad, Pakistan..

The next generation of al-Qaida leaders, say counterterrorism officials, is an eclectic mix of fighters, propagandists, clerics and administrators.

Those identified as potential next-generation successors are:

-- Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah. The 36-year-old Saudi is known as “Jaffar the Pilot” because he has a pilot’s license. Reportedly the director of operations for al-Qaida. Shukrijumah spent his teenage years in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Broward County, Fla., where he earned a degree in computer science. He is reported to have had roles in the 2009 plot to bomb the New York City subway and was put on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list a year later. He has been sought by the U.S. since 2003.

-- Jaber A. El-Baneh. A 45-year-old Yemeni known as Jubair, el-Baneh emigrated to New York where he settled for a time in Buffalo.  He was viewed as the mastermind of the Lackawanna Six plot in 2003, having financed and recruited other members. After escaping to Yemen, he was jailed there but sprung in a jailbreak. A senior Obama administration official said last month that el-Baneh has risen to a leadership position in the Yemen-based Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).  “I do see, more and more, el-Baneh being a real concern,” said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. “He has longtime connections, including to Egyptian extremist elements. And he does seem to be more engaged in trying to support attacks.”

But Leiter, the former director of the National Counter Terrorism Center, said that whoever succeeds al-Libi will have to be a member of al-Qaida central, not one of its affiliate terror groups, meaning el-Baneh would not be considered.

-- Adam Gadahn. A 33-year-old American known as Azzam al Amriki, or “Azzam the American,” Gadahn, formerly regarded as an al-Qaida propagandist, is now viewed as a strategist. Materials found in bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound included correspondence between the al-Qaida leader and the American jihadi. “Bin Laden took his mail,” the U.S. official said of Gadahn. “He’s not just a propagandist --more a strategist-- clearly someone who is not a crazy person. There are a number of people who were there on 9-11.  That clearly gives him some standing.” Gadahn has been charged in California with treason, a capital crime, and giving material aid to terrorism.

-- Sheikh Khalid Abdur Rahman al-Hussainan. A 45-year-old Kuwaiti, known as Abu Zaid al-Kuwaiti, al-Hussainan is one of al-Qaida’s newest faces. He’s a charismatic cleric and teacher who’s responsible for “the religious training and the salvation of the soldiers of the al-Qaida network,” according to an al-Qaida publication. Educated at Saudi-Arabian universities, he worked for a time as a scholar at Kuwait´s Ministry for Religious Affairs. He’s considered less doctrinaire than the older generation trainers.  In an interview with an al-Qaida publication, he said he would “converse with them (his students) in an exciting way. We would make them laugh and kid around with them.”  

Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News counterterrorism analyst, notes, “Nobody talks about him, but he appears as a featured speaker on as-Sahab videos nowadays more often than Zawahiri and Abu Yahya combined.” (Click here to watch English subtitled video.)

US puts bounties on top Al Shabab leaders in Somalia

--Ali Sayyid Muhamed Mustafa al-Bakri. A 46-year-old Egyptian known as Abd al-Aziz al-Masri, al Bakri is not well known. But the National Counter Terrorism Center, the government’s  primary organization for tracking terrorism,  notes that he is a “member of the al-Qaida Shura council (its governing body) and a close associate of Zawahiri." Al-Bakri is considered dangerous because he has explosives and chemical weapon expertise and has trained al-Qaida operatives as far back as the late 1990s. He attempted to hijack a Pakistani passenger flight in December 2000.  “It is likely that he continues to train al-Qaida terrorists and other extremists,” reports the NCTC.

“Ever since the death of bin Laden, the al-Qaida core we’ve known since 9/11 is the closest it has ever been to a tipping point,” said the U.S. official familiar with counter terrorism strategy.  “This does not mean the group is dead or the threat is gone, but core al-Qaida in Pakistan is on life support, and its chances of recovery are more daunting when they lose a guy like Abu Yahya.

“Undoubtedly, some al-Qaida members will be tapped to try to backfill Abu Yahya’s responsibilities, but in the days that follow, the succession won’t be obvious either to them or Zawahiri.”

Indeed in the past year, mainly through Predator and other drone attacks, the U.S. has been able to “remove from the battlefield” in the words of one senior Pentagon official, one al-Qaida leader after another.

In addition to Abu Yahya, these senior al-Qaida officials have been killed since bin Laden’s death:

• Ilyas Kashmiri, al-Qaida’s director of external operations, killed in a drone strike in Pakistan on June 3;
• Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, mastermind of the East Africa embassy bombings and head of al-Qaida in East Africa, died in a shootout by Somali forces on June 11;
• Abdul Rahman Atiya, bin Laden’s chief of staff,  killed in a drone strike Pakistan on Aug. 22; 
• Anwar al Awlaki, a leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and an American citizen, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen on Sept. 30;
• Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al Quso, mastermind of the USS Cole bombing, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen on May 6 of this year.

Officials across the spectrum of counter terrorism, in intelligence and special operations, say the last year of operations, starting with the killing of bin Laden, has been the most successful since the war on al-Qaida began following the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We have decimated them, decimated them,” said the senior Pentagon official.

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.

Updated at 12:20 p.m. ET: SANAA, Yemen  - A suicide bomber with explosives strapped under his uniform killed more than 90 people at a military parade rehearsal in the Yemeni capital Sanaa on Monday, an attack which will alarm Washington as its involvement in the front-line state deepens. 

The bombing also wounded about 200 people, officials said, making it the bloodiest single incident in the city in recent years.

An al-Qaida source told the BBC that one of its own had carried out the attack.

---

Yemen's defense minister and chief of staff were both present at the rehearsal for Tuesday's National Day parade but neither was hurt. A police source said he could not rule out the bombing was an attempt to assassinate them. 

Weakened by an uprising that eventually toppled former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's government has lost control over whole swathes of the country, allowing militants to overrun several towns in the southern province of Abyan. 

The attack, along with an ambush on Sunday on a U.S. military training team in the south of the country, indicated their campaign could be entering a dangerous new stage. Troops closed in on a militant strongholds on Sunday in heavy fighting. 

More than 30 Yemeni troops killed in militant attack

A U.S. military instructor was seriously wounded in Sunday's ambush, which was claimed by militant group Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Islamic Law), which is affiliated to al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). 

The United States sees Yemen as a vital front in its global war on Islamic militants and is increasing its military support for the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.  

Carnage
The explosion in Sanaa's Sabaeen Square left scenes of carnage, with bloodied victims and body parts strewn across the 10-lane road where the rehearsal was held on Monday morning, not far from the presidential palace. 

The defense ministry said at least 90 soldiers were killed and 222 wounded.

"We had just finished the parade. We were saluting our commander when a huge explosion went off," said soldier Amr Habib. "It was a gruesome attack. Many soldiers were killed and others had their arms and legs blown off."

'Puppet' and 'Stooge': al-Qaida chief al-Zawahiri issues message on Yemen

Another soldier told the Associated Press: "This is a real massacre. There are piles of torn body parts, limbs and heads. This is unbelievable."

One investigator said preliminary findings suggested the suicide bomber was a rogue soldier rather than a man in a disguise.

"The suicide bomber was dressed in a military uniform. He had a belt of explosives underneath," said a man who identified himself as Colonel Amin al-Alghabati, his hands and uniform flecked with blood.

The usual security procedure for such an event would involve checks being made on the soldiers at their bases before they are transported to the site of the parade in army vehicles.

The wounded were ferried to hospital in taxis.

Hospitals overwhelmed
"Most of the injuries are to the head, we have dozens paralyzed. We expect the death toll to rise. Most of the injured here are boys in their teens. Sanaa's hospitals are overwhelmed," said doctor Mohsen al-Dhahari.

In response to days of violence, Hadi fired two senior commanders and allies of his predecessor Saleh, who he replaced in February.

One of them, Yahya Saleh, the former president's nephew, was the head of national security, an intelligence gathering unit that works closely with the CIA. Most of those hurt were from this unit, the BBC reported. 

Report: Al-Qaida doctors trained to implant bombs in humans

Yemen has seen a spate of deadly attacks since Hadi took office saying he would extinguish an Islamist insurgency, which until now has been concentrated in the south.

The parade was scheduled for Tuesday to mark the unification of north and south Yemen, previously separate states, which were merged in 1990.  

Reuters, The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report. 

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Western intelligence agencies believe that al-Qaida doctors have been trained to implant bombs inside the bodies of suicide bombers, Britain's Sunday Times reported.

The doctors, thought to have been trained by a man who worked with the top bomb-maker for al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), have the ability to put explosive compounds in breasts and abdomens of suicide bombers, the newspaper reported without citing its sources.

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The lead doctor was thought to have been killed in a drone attack earlier this year and likely worked with the master bomber-maker, Ibrahim al-Asiri, according to the newspaper.

CIA foiled al-Qaida plot to destroy US-bound airliner

The CIA want to track down the group of doctors, the newspaper reported. 

"There is a transferable skill and there is still some concern," said a Western security official who spoke to The Sunday Times on condition of anonymity.

Experts said explosive compounds such as pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) could be surgically implanted in an aspiring suicide bomber, who would them allow the wounds to heal, according to the newspaper. Body scanners in most airports around the world would not be able to detect the device, which could be detonated by injection, the newspaper added.

The news follows revelations on Monday that that AQAP tried to arm a suicide bomber with a non-metallic device that was an upgraded version of an "underwear bomb" that was carried on to a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day 2009, but failed to detonate.

Reports: Al-Qaida leader wanted in USS Cole bombing killed in Yemen airstrike

The device that authorities seized in the undercover operation contained what was intended to be a more reliable detonating mechanism, counter-terrorism officials said Monday.

U.S. officials said that the latest plot was foiled by the CIA and allied foreign intelligence services, without identifying the allies. British authorities put heavy pressure on the Obama administration not to disclose Britain's role in the investigation.

Several U.S. media outlets reported that Saudi Arabia was the key partner in the operation.

But it turned out that British intelligence played what appears to be a more central role in foiling the plot to send a suicide bomber on to an airplane. The operation was a cooperative venture between Britain's domestic and foreign intelligence services known as MI5 and MI6, officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

Al-Qaida kidnapped Iranian envoy in bid to free bin Laden kin, colleagues

As details of the operation emerge, it appears to be a striking example of how U.S., European and Middle Eastern intelligence services cooperate on complex counterterrorism missions.

A spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office declined to comment, saying that in such cases it never confirmed or denied the involvement of British intelligence. A spokesman for British intelligence also declined to comment. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Just days before the news broke about the CIA's takedown of a plot involving a sophisticated new underwear bomb, al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen publicly boasted that it had vastly expanded and improved its capabilities for making such devices.

That boast -- contained in a largely overlooked passage of Inspire, the online propaganda organ of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) -- has fueled concerns that there may be other versions of the seized device and more bomb makers assembling them, according to U.S. security officials and members of Congress who have been briefed on the case.

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"They have a team of engineers, scientists and doctors. It's a little spooky,"  said Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, a member of the Homeland Security Committee who was briefed this week on the intelligence operation that U.S. officials say thwarted an AQAP plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner. "In my view, it’s very likely they have produced more of these."

One hint at the expansion of AQAP's bomb-making capabilities can be found in passages in an article entitled "Wining on the Ground," found on the 57th page of the latest 59-page edition of Inspire, released by AQAP last weekend.

In 2009, AQAP had only a "very modest and small laboratory in a rural area" to make bombs, the author of the article –identified as Yahya Ibrahim -- wrote.

That was the year AQAP dispatched a suicide bomber to use a chemical underwear bomb to attempt to assassinate Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdul Azizbin, director of Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism program, and later deployed another operative from Nigeria to try to blow up a U.S. airliner bound for Detroit. Neither device detonated properly, though the bomber in the first attack was killed.

But now, after obtaining “a large deal of chemicals from military laboratories" in a key city in southern Yemen -- "the modest lab has transformed into a modern one," the Inspire article stated.

"Hence, no wearisome measures are taken anymore to obtain the needed large amount of chemicals for explosives," it said. "Also, the operations now do not lack money as before." 

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This was not the first time AQAP has signaled that its bomb-making capabilities may be greater than U.S. officials have suggested.

In an issue of Inspire in late 2010, the group appeared to mock comments by U.S. officials focusing on the critical role of its top bomb-maker, Ibrahim Hassan Asiri -- who has been widely credited with designing the underwear bombs.

"Isn't it funny how America thinks AQAP has only one major bomb maker?" an article stated. 

Gregory Johnsen, a highly respected Yemen scholar who specializes in AQAP at Princeton University, said the propaganda outlet’s statements are likely true.

"We have to assume that there is not only one bomb-maker," he said. "It makes sense that he (Asiri) is somebody who has taught others" about making such bombs.

Johnsen said that the expansion of AQAP's bomb-making operations would be just one example of the dramatic gains the group has made in the past few years. As a result of the internal chaos in Yemen, and its shrewd exploitation of civilian casualties caused by U.S. air strikes, AQAP has made major advances, Johnsen said.

By U.S. intelligence estimates, the number of AQAP fighters has tripled to more than 1,000. It has also seized swaths of territory in southern Yemen, where it runs its own court system, deploys police officers and provides electricity to some towns, Johnsen said.

U.S. intelligence officials say they have no specific information indicating that other improvised explosive devices (IEDs) similar to the one that was turned over by a CIA informant last month have been produced and possibly spirited out of Yemen.

But John Brennan, President Barack Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, said Tuesday in an interview with PBS that U.S. officials are taking additional measures "to prevent any other type of IED similarly constructed from getting through security procedures."

At the same time, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued new "guidance" calling for enhanced security at foreign airports, including additional pat-downs and random searches, as well as other steps aimed at detecting such bombs.

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Updated at 8:01 a.m. ET -- An insider who worked with the United States and an allied security service to thwart an al-Qaida bomb plot hatched in Yemen was the man picked to carry out the suicide attack on a U.S.-bound airliner, U.S. and Yemeni officials tell NBC News.

An unidentified Yemeni  government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the supposed suicide bomber was working for Western intelligence “from day one.”

The insider also provided information that allowed the U.S. to launch a Predator drone strike that killed the group’s operations chief, senior U.S. officials told NBC News earlier Tuesday.

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"It was managed so that it was not a threat," said one senior Obama administration official, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity. “We were confident that we had inside control over any plot that might have been associated with this device.

 

 

“The device never got near an airplane. To our knowledge, it never got near an airplane or airport.”

The bomb -- a refined version of an “underwear bomb” used in two previous failed terror plots -- was driven out of Yemen by the insider into Saudi Arabia. It is now in the hands of U.S. bomb experts at the FBI labs in Quantico, Va., where experts have been examining it for a week, the officials said. The infiltrator also is safely out of Yemen.

The officials also said that a successful Predator attack that killed Fahd al-Quso over the weekend was related to the plot and was a “part of a 1-2 blow against Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP),” the north African affiliate of the al-Qaida terrorist network.  Al Quso, described as director of external operations at AQAP, was “involved (in the bomb plot) in an intimate fashion,” said the senior administration official. 

The officials declined to identify the allied security service involved in penetrating the plot, but multiple U.S. sources told NBC News that British intelligence was "heavily involved" in shutting down the plot. Separately, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said that multiple friendly security services were involved in the operation. 

The plot, which U.S. officials described Monday as a plan to detonate aboard a U.S.-bound jetliner a refined version of the “underwear bomb” that failed to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009. That device, worn by convicted bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, did not detonate.

The bomb aboard Northwest Flight 253 was the second failure of such a device. Four months prior, a suicide bomber attempted to kill Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdul Azizbin, director of Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism program, at his palace in Jeddah. The bomber died in the attack, but the prince only suffered burns to one hand.

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The new bomb had a more refined detonation mechanism and was "totally non-metallic," which officials told NBC News would have made it more difficult to detect by traditional security screening processes.

The senior administration official would not comment on whether the would-be bomber, who is believed to be a Yemeni national, was in custody, but did say, “We do not believe the intended user of the device poses a threat."

The official also disputed reports indicating that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula sought to detonate the bomb around the anniversary of al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden’s death, saying, “They hoped it would be carried out this month, but (there is) nothing from our insight that it was to coincide with anniversary or in retaliation for OBL’s death.”

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