London: Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden may be alive and in his ancestral homeland Yemen where he is being protected by his tribesmen.

The focus of the manhunt for the terrorist mastermind has dramatically shifted over the past few weeks from Afghanistan and Pakistan's border areas to the lawless tribal region of Hadhra Maug in South East Yemen, where bin Laden's father was born, a media report said.

The report also spoke about the capture of a high-ranking al-Qaida official in the region, suggesting the noose might be tightening around bin Laden. Six other members of the terrorist network were killed in a rocket attack by an unmanned Predator drone two weeks ago.

The British Foreign Office issued an advisory to all British nationals to leave Yemen for fears of reprisal attacks and warned against travel there. They also said that intelligence services were picking up increased "chatter" from the region similar to that picked up in the run-up to September 11.

The revelation that bin Laden is in Yemen comes in the wake of the taped message of bin Laden broadcast on al-Jazeera on November 12 and authenticated by language experts showing that he is still alive, although probably in ill-health.

According to 'The Sunday Telegraph', bin Laden is reported to have fled Afghanistan last November travelling along opium traffickers' routes through Eastern Iran then down through the desert of Baluchistan in Pakistan to the port of Gwador, an area mostly off-limits to foreigners.

Bin Laden is then thought to have travelled by traditional dhow across the Arabian Sea to Oman and on to Yemen, protected by tribesmen of the Hadhra Maug, who are fiercely loyal to his family and have long waged war with the government.

The newspaper quoted an American official saying, "We left too many windows. We could not seal the border with Pakistan and we failed to monitor shipping particularly in those early days."

The new evidence came to light among thousands of documents captured by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, during raids on buildings used by Hamas, the Islamic militants, and Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah, on the West Bank, in last March.

Yemen is one of the countries where al-Qaida was thought to be regrouping most actively. The country, just as Afghanistan was when bin Laden made it his base, is a largely lawless place where the government exerts little control, and is thus perfect territory for bin Laden's men. The blowing up of the French oil tanker Limberg off the Yemen coast in October was confirmed as an al-Qaida attack.

In another report, the newspaper said a new cache of al-Qaida training videos has been discovered in Afghanistan in which terrorists simulate the seizure of what appears to be a building full of Westerners, suggesting that a hotel might be bin Laden's next target.

One video shows hotel "guests" ordering room service only to be assassinated when they open their door to the "waiter".

The discovery of the tapes, which are currently being analysed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), comes amid warnings from Western governments to expect new attacks.

PTI