Population: 23.6 million (UN, 2009)
Capital: Sanaa
Major language: Arabic
Major religion: Islam
Oil exports: $1.5bn/24.5m barrels (Jan-Oct 2009)
Income per capita: US $950 (World Bank, 2008)
It is not clear when the US embassy in Sanaa will reopen
Yemeni security forces have been fighting militants
The US has shut its embassy in Yemen's capital Sanaa, citing "ongoing threats" by an al-Qaeda offshoot linked to an alleged failed US plane bomb plot.
In a statement on its website, the embassy reminded US citizens in Yemen to be vigilant and aware of security.
It comes a day after top US soldier Gen David Petraeus visited Yemen to pledge US support for its fight with al-Qaeda.
There is mounting Western concern that Yemen, the Arab world's poorest nation, is becoming an al-Qaeda haven.
"The US Embassy in Sanaa is closed today, January 3, 2010, in response to ongoing threats by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to attack American interests in Yemen," said a statement on the embassy website on Sunday.
It is not clear when the mission will reopen.
'Tighten the noose'
The embassy was the target of an attack in September 2008, which was blamed on al-Qaeda, and in which 19 people died, including a young American woman.
On Saturday, President Barack Obama accused al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula of orchestrating a failed Christmas Day attack on a US plane.
The group said last week it had trained 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who spent time in Yemen last year, to carry out the attempted bombing of the airliner over Detroit.
In its internet statement, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula urged Muslims to help in "killing every crusader who works at their embassies or other places".
Also on Saturday, Gen Petraeus, head of US Middle East and Central Asian operations, visited Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh to discuss the militant threat.
It came a day after the general announced that the US would more than double counter-terrorism aid to Yemen this year.
The US provided $67m (£41m) in training and support to Yemen last year; only Pakistan receives more, with about $112m, according to AP news agency.
Yemeni officials said on Saturday they had sent more troops to fight al-Qaeda militants in the provinces of Abyan, Baida and Shabwa.
"These measures are part of operations to hunt down elements of al-Qaeda... and tighten the noose around extremists," a Yemeni official told AFP news agency.
Analysts say the US has also provided intelligence to Yemeni forces, which carried out raids on 17 and 24 December that reportedly left more than 60 militants dead.
In his weekly address, President Obama said he had made it "a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government, training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike al-Qaeda terrorists".
'New type of threat'
He said training camps had already "been struck, leaders eliminated, plots disrupted".
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the BBC on Sunday that the UK would work with the US to step up Yemen's counter-terrorism efforts.
"This is a new type of threat and it is from a new source which is obviously Yemen," said Mr Brown, "but there are many other potential sources Somalia, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan."
Yemen was thrust to the top of the Western security agenda in October 2000, when 17 US sailors died in an al-Qaeda suicide attack on the USS Cole destroyer in the port of Aden.
Correspondents say the Yemeni government needs economic as well as military aid.
With a fast-growing and impoverished population, the country is facing diminishing water reserves and the likelihood that its only source of income, oil, will run dry in a few years.
But security is just as big a challenge, complicated by an abundance of firearms, an insurgency in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.
While the government is weak and unpopular in much of the country, the US has little choice but to work through it to fight al-Qaeda as any overt US presence would almost certainly provoke a public backlash.
But the prospects of re-asserting central government authority over the lawless areas where al-Qaeda is based look, in the opinion of some analysts, remote - even with beefed-up American support.
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