Pakistan said today its forces had captured two high-level al-Qaeda terror suspects, including one with a multimillion-dollar US bounty on his head, in a renewed sweep that has netted at least six militants from the Islamist terror group.

Faisal Saleh Hayyat, the Interior Minister, said that the arrests in eastern Punjab province constituted another major breakthrough, just days after intelligence agents swooped on Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian wanted for the 1998 bombings of US embassies in East Africa.

"In addition to Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, whose bounty was $25 million, we have captured another most wanted suspect with a bounty on him running into the millions of dollars," Mr Hayyat told a news conference.

He said both of the suspects were of African origin but refused to identify them or their nationalities. Four Egyptians and a Libyan on the FBI's list of 22 most wanted terrorists are believed to be in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but it is not clear if they were among those captured.

Each of the men has a $5 million bounty on his head in connection with the embassy bombings. Osama bin Laden's No 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, is also from Egypt. The two men are believed hiding along the Pakistan-Afghan border, far from Punjab province.

The capture of Mr Ghailani has already yielded valuable intelligence on possible al-Qaeda targets in the United States which led to the Bush Administration increasing the terror alert in three major cities.

But news that the intelligence in question, found on Mr Ghailani's computer, was several years old, brought accusations that the heightened alert was politically motivated and designed to deflect attention from John Kerry, the Democratic challenger for the White House

Those accusations were denied today by Tom Ridge, who as Homeland Security Secretary is charged with protecting the United States from terrorist attack.

"We do not do politics at the Department of Homeland Security. Our job is to identify the threat," Mr Ridge said as he toured the Citigroup Centre in central Manhanttan - one of five banking icons surveyed by al-Qaeda as a possible target.

Mr Ridge said that intelligence and security officials were working on the assumption that al-Qaeda operatives were already in place in the United States. "We just assume that there are operatives here. We just have to accept, for our planning and preparation, perhaps, that they're here, they're looking to attack us," he said.

Much of the information that led the authorities to raise the terror alert is three or four years old, according to officials quoted in a report in The New York Times today.

But the officials continued to regard the information as significant because the reconnaissance already conducted has provided al-Qaeda with the knowledge necessary to carry out attacks.

In Islamabad, Mr Hayyat's announcement followed news that at least six al-Qaida suspects - including a Syrian man - have been arrested in separate raids in recent days.

They are believed to be linked to other al-Qaeda suspects in custody - including a computer expert identified as Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, who was arrested July 13. Information provided by Mr Khan led to the arrest in eastern Gujrat on July 25 of Mr Ghailani.

British officials have said that there were no specific threats against UK targets found in e-mails and other documents unearthed after the arrests in Pakistan.

But after the new "Code Orange" security alert came into effect yesterday in America, security sources on both sides of the Atlantic said that American banks in the City of London were being targeted.

They included high-profile American institutions, such as Citigroup, which is based in one of the "twin towers" of Canary Wharf, and the Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, which have headquarters in London.

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