SANAA - Yemeni forces on Saturday arrested a woman believed to be involved in sending explosive packages bound for the United States that triggered a global security alert, Yemeni security officials said.
The arrest was the first in the case, in which two air freight packages containing bombs - both sent from Yemen and addressed to synagogues in Chicago - were intercepted in Britain and Dubai.
The officials said the woman had been traced through a telephone number she had left with a cargo company.
They told Reuters she was a medical student at Sanaa University and believed to be in her 20s. She was arrested in a poor neighbourhood in the west of the Yemeni capital Sanaa.
The women's lawyer said her mother had also been detained, but was not a prime suspect.
Britain said the device found on a cargo plane at its East Midlands airport was big enough to down an aircraft.
"We believe the device was designed to go off on the aeroplane. We cannot be sure about the timing when that was meant to take place," Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters at Chequers, his country residence outside London.
"In the end these terrorists think that our interconnectedness, our openness as modern countries is what makes us weak," he said. "They are wrong - it is a source of our strength, and we will use that strength, that determination, that power and that solidarity to defeat them".
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