Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said on Monday authorities had arrested a group of Islamic militants which he said had links to Israeli intelligence.

The group, which had contacts with the Jewish state "despite raising the slogan of Islam", would be brought to trial, the official news agency Saba quoted Saleh as saying without giving further details.

Israel is considered an enemy by Islamist militants.

It was not immediately clear if Saleh was referring to militants belonging to a group calling itself Islamic Jihad, who were arrested last month. A Yemeni security official told Reuters on Monday that authorities had found evidence of contacts by those militants with Israelis.

Yemen in September arrested six members of Islamic Jihad, a group which claimed an attack on the U.S. embassy that killed 19 people in the same month. The group has no links to the Palestinian organisation with the same name.

Abu al-Ghaith al-Yamani -- who signed the group's statements and was thought to be its leader -- was among the six arrested.

Authorities said then that the six were detained for threatening to target foreign embassies including the Saudi and British embassies. In detailing the charges, they made no mention of the U.S. embassy attack.

The group had said it belonged to al Qaeda and threatened to attack the British and Saudi embassies and assassinate high state officials unless the government freed its jailed members.

The twin suicide car bombings on the embassy were the biggest militant operation in Yemen since the attacks on the French tanker Limburg in 2002 and the U.S. warship Cole in 2000.

The government joined the U.S.-led war against terrorism following the September 11 attacks on U.S. cities in 2001.

It has jailed scores of militants in connection with bombings of Western targets and clashes with authorities, but is still viewed in the West as a haven for Islamist militants.