The United Nations security council has added the Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to its list of outlawed organisations.
Two of the group's purported leaders, Nasser al-Wahayshi and Qasim al-Raymi, also face new restrictions after the move by the international body's sanctions committee on Tuesday.
Among the sanctions against the two men, who were among 23 fighters who escaped from a jail in Sanaa in 2006, were worldwide freezes on their assets and travel bans.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claims to have been behind the failed attempt to blow up a Detriot-bound airliner on Christmas Day as well as other attacks inside Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
"Today's actions strengthen international efforts to degrade the capabilities of AQAP," Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said.
The UN committee made its decision the day after the US state department added the al-Qaeda group to it list of proscribed organisations.
"We are determined to eliminate AQAP's ability to execute violent attacks and to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat their networks," Philip Crowley, a state department spokesman, said.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was formed in January 2009 after the merger of groups in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
It has since set up bases inside Yemen and has been blamed for the suicide attack on South Korean tourists in March 2009 and an attempt to assassinate the Saudi deputy interior minister across the border in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.
Yemen has bolsetered its troops in three of the country's provinces in an attempt to tackle al-Qaeda and has carried out a number of air raids, which it claims have left dozens of fighters dead.
Al-Raymi was among a number of senior al-Qaeda figures reported to have been killed in a Yemeni attack on two vehicles on Friday.
The government in Sanaa is also battling so-called Houthi rebels in the north and a secessionist movement in the south.
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