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After days of alarms and embassy lockdowns, the United States and Britain on Tuesday stepped up security precautions in Yemen, with Washington ordering “nonemergency” government personnel to leave and the Foreign Office in London saying it has withdrawn its diplomatic staff in the capital of Sana “due to increased security concerns.”

In the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, where the threat of attack is considered greatest, the UK, France and Germany have also shut their embassies.

The British embassy has emptied completely, with all remaining British staff leaving the country on Tuesday, while the US air force flew out American personnel.

 The measures came a day after officials in Washington said the United States had intercepted electronic communications in which the head of Al Qaeda ordered the leader of the group’s affiliate in Yemen to carry out an attack as early as this past Sunday.

Consequently the Obama administration decided last week to close nearly two dozen diplomatic missions and issue a worldwide travel alert.

The British and American warnings were issued several hours after Yemeni military officials said that at least four men, suspected of being Al Qaeda members, were killed in what was described as an American drone strike in the eastern Marib region of Yemen early on Tuesday.

AQAP has form. In August 2009, its master bomb-maker Ibrahim al-Asiri, a Saudi national, built an explosive device so hard to detect it was either packed flat next to the wearer's groin or perhaps even concealed inside his body.

He then sent his brother Abdullah, a willing volunteer, as a human bomb to blow up the Saudi prince in charge of counter-terrorism. He very nearly succeeded.

Pretending he wanted to give himself up, Abdullah al-Asiri fooled Saudi security into letting him get right next to Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef before the device was detonated, possibly remotely by mobile phone.

The blast blew the bomber in half, but with most of the explosive force directed downwards, the prince had a miraculous escape with only a damaged hand. AQAP boasted that it would try again and it did.

In December 2009, Ibrahim al-Asiri devised another device to put on a volunteer, this time a young Nigerian called Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

He was able to fly all the way from Europe to Detroit with a viable explosive device hidden in his underpants, a massive failure of intelligence and security.

 The security alert spread to some of the United States’ allies in Europe. Britain and France closed their embassies in Yemen and said Monday that they had extended the shutdown until at least Thursday. Washington also announced that its embassy would stay shut until after the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, also expected on Thursday in most places. The German mission in Yemen was closed Monday, while Norway shut its embassies in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

In recent years, the Al Qaeda affiliate in poverty-stricken Yemen has plotted a number of potentially spectacular attacks including an attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic jet over Detroit on Dec. 25, 2009, using explosives sewn into an attacker’s underwear. Months earlier, an attacker with a bomb surgically implanted in his body tried to kill the Saudi intelligence chief.

American officials have identified the bomb-builder in both cases as Ibrahim al-Asiri, an Al Qeada leader in Yemen whom the Obama administration has been trying to kill as part of a campaign using armed drones. But it was not clear if the reported attack on Tuesday was part of that same operation.

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