US embassy closures extend amid "most serious threat"

The US says its embassies in north Africa and the Middle East will remain closed until Saturday, due to a possible militant threat.

According to the BBC, twenty one U.S. embassies and consulates closed on Sunday. The State Department in Washington said the extended closures were "out of an abundance of caution", and "not an indication of a new threat".

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the on going closures are "merely an indication of our commitment to exercise caution and take appropriate steps to protect our employees, including local employees, and visitors to our facilities."

Meanwhile, US diplomatic missions in Algiers, Kabul and Baghdad will reopen on Monday, Washington said. But its diplomatic posts in Abu Dhabi, Amman, Cairo, Riyadh, Dhahran, Jeddah, Doha, Dubai, Kuwait, Manama, Muscat, Sanaa and Tripoli will remain closed until Saturday.

The Reuters reported that the State Department issued a worldwide travel alertlast week,warning Americans that al Qaeda may be planning attacks in August, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa.

"There is an awful lot of chatter out there," U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

He said the "chatter" - communications among terrorism suspects about the planning of a possible attack - was "very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11."

"This is the most serious threat that I've seen in the last several years," he said.

"Al Qaeda is in many ways stronger than it was before 9/11, because it's mutated and it spread and it can come at us from different directions," U.S.Representative Peter King, a Republican, said on ABC's "This Week."

"And al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is probably the most deadly of all the al Qaeda affiliates," he said.

Officials told NBC News that the threat appears to be linked to Yemen, but State Department spokespeople have only confirmed that the warnings are generally tied to al Qaeda.

Yemen is home to perhaps the most dangerous terror network affiliate, known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The lethal wing is considered responsible for several terrorist strikes on the United States, including the foiled Christmas Day 2009 attempt to bomb an airplane over Detroit.

Some European countries -including Britain, Germany, and France -temporarily shut down their embassies in Yemen as officials moved to tighten security.