Pakistan arrested a suspected member of al Qaeda with a multi-million-dollar bounty on his head and several others, government officials said Tuesday.

Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat told Reuters that they have arrested in the past 24 hours from Punjab another two people of African origin who was considered to have links to al Qaeda, and before that another suspect who has a multi-million-dollar price on his head was also nabbed. The minister refused to provide any further details on the big catch.

The crackdown on militants in Pakistan has apparently gathered pace since the capture of a computer engineer who acted as an e-mail postman for the groups by distributing coded messages.

U.S. officials say information from that arrest, and from the later capture of senior al Qaeda member Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, prompted them to issue a high alert warning to financial institutions in Washington, New York and New Jersey.