Factbox: Yemen's resurgent al Qaeda wing

SANAA (Reuters) - Gunmen killed at least five Yemeni soldiers on Thursday in a suspected al Qaeda ambush of a military convoy in the south, the third assault on state targets in five weeks blamed on the group's resurgent regional arm.

Al Qaeda in Yemen previously focused on high-impact strikes against Western and Saudi targets, but appears to now be targeting government forces in response to enhanced Yemen-U.S. security coordination and a state crackdown.

Here are some facts about al Qaeda in Yemen:

* Al Qaeda's Yemeni and Saudi wings announced a merger in 2009 into a new group, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), based in Yemen. The move came after a three-year armed al Qaeda campaign in Saudi Arabia was halted in 2006 by a counter-terrorism drive.

* AQAP's Yemeni leader, Nasser al-Wahayshi, was once a close associate of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, whose father was born in Yemen, a neighbor of top oil exporter Saudi Arabia.

* AQAP has threatened attacks against Westerners in the oil-exporting region and seeks the fall of the U.S.-allied Saudi royal family. Yemen's foreign minister has said that up to 300 al Qaeda militants might be in Yemen.

* AQAP claimed responsibility for a December attempt to bomb a U.S.-bound passenger plane, and said it provided the explosive device used in the failed attack. The suspected bomber, a young Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had visited Yemen and had been in contact with militants there.

* Yemen declared open war on al Qaeda in January following the failed attack, stepping up airstrikes targeting the group. But Sanaa has come under criticism from rights groups for the strikes that also killed many civilians.

* The United States and Saudi Arabia fear al Qaeda might exploit instability in Yemen -- which is also trying to cement a truce with Shi'ite rebels in the north and quell separatist unrest in the south -- to make it a launchpad for more attacks.

* U.S. officials have said the Pentagon planned to boost U.S. military assistance to Yemen's special operations forces to lead an offensive targeting AQAP.

* AQAP has been behind a number of recent attacks in Yemen, including a suicide attack targeting the British ambassador in April 2010, accusing him of leading a war on Muslims in the Arabian Peninsula on Britain's behalf.

* In August 2009, an AQAP suicide bomber tried to kill Prince Mohammed bin Nayef who heads Saudi Arabia's anti-terrorism campaign and is a member of the Saudi ruling family. The same year, al Qaeda also carried out a suicide attack that killed four South Korean tourists in Yemen.

* In addition to attacks on Western targets, AQAP has also struck out at the Yemeni security forces as they attempted to clamp down on the group. Shooting attacks on security buildings and a military convoy in June and July 2010 killed 20 people.

* But Al Qaeda had been active in Yemen long before the Saudi and Yemeni branches merged. Nearly a year before the September 11, 2001 attacks, al Qaeda bombed the U.S. warship Cole in October 2000 in the south Yemen port of Aden, killing 17 U.S. sailors. Two years later an al Qaeda attack damaged a French supertanker in the Gulf of Aden.

* In 2008, two suicide bombers set off a series of blasts outside the heavily fortified U.S. embassy in Sanaa, killing 16 people including the attackers. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by a group called Islamic Jihad in Yemen, which analysts said was linked to al Qaeda.

* U.S. officials have said Washington has authorized the CIA to kill or capture a leading figure linked to the group -- U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. AQAP threatened the United States with more attacks should he be harmed.

(Compiled by Cynthia Johnston and Firouz Sedarat)