Yemeni chef 'arrested for cooking-up Saudi king assassination plot'

Four Yemeni men, including a chef and a student, were among seven arrested for suspected links to terror groups, officials said, ahead of the king's state visit to the country.

"We managed to get them in the nick of time … Thank god, they did not even get close," Malaysia's police chief Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said.

The militants, aged between 26 and 33, were arrested as part of a nationwide counterterrorism raid.

The chef worked in a Yemeni restaurant while the student was enrolled at a private university.

The other two were reportedly unemployed.

"Their work and university background were just a ruse to conceal the syndicate forging travel documents," a source told local press adding that the Yemenis had been in Malaysia for about five years.

Saudi Arabia has been leading an Arab coalition waging war against Houthi rebels in Yemen for almost two years, after the Iran-backed rebels allied to deposed long-time leader Ali Abdullah Saleh overthrew the country's internationally recognised government in Sanaa.

More than 10,000 people, half of which civilians, have been killed in the ongoing conflict, while millions more face a lack of security, poverty and malnourishment in the region's poorest nation.