Yemeni troops arrested seven suspected Al-Qaeda militants including a local financier on Wednesday in the southern town of Jaar which the army recaptured in June after deadly battles.

Yemeni troops arrested seven suspected Al-Qaeda militants including a local financier on Wednesday in the southern town of Jaar which the army recaptured in June after deadly battles, a military official said.

The army and local militiamen who fought the jihadists "arrested seven Al-Qaeda militants, among them a financier, Abu Musab, and a Somali," the official said.

"Those arrested were gathered in a house in Jaar and were planning to attack the army" and members of the local militias known as Popular Resistance Committees, he told AFP.

Defense ministry news website 26sep.net confirmed the report, saying that "computers and dangerous documents were found with the members of this terrorist cell."

Abu Musab "is a leading financier of Al-Qaeda in Abyan province and has lead the terrorist groups to attack the central bank in (provincial capital) Zinjibar when the city was under the militants' control in May," the army official said.

Officials and tribesmen said on Tuesday that 13 suspected militants were killed in two days across Yemen in separate raids.

Jaar, which the army recaptured from the salafists in June with the help of the militiamen, was the site of a suicide attack on Saturday in which 49 people were killed, according to a new toll provided by hospitals in Aden.

Four Al-Qaeda suspects implicated in the attack have been arrested, according to officials.