Al Qaeda Offers Gold Bounty for Death of American Ambassador to Yemen, Thousands of Dollars to Kill American Soldiers

Al Qaeda is offering a huge reward for the death of the American ambassador to Yemen, though they'll settle for dead American soldiers.

The terrorist group has scattered in recent years, dealt a hard blow by the death of their leader, Osama bin Laden, at the hands of Navy Seals in 2011.

But militants continue to attack innocents around the world. The American ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, was killed in Benghazi by insurgents on Sept. 11, 2012.

Now Al Qaeda in Yemen wants someone to duplicate that assassination in their country.

The media wing of the group, the Al-Malahem Foundation, released an audio recording offering three kilograms of gold to anyone who kills Gerald M. Feierstein, who has been the American ambassador to Libya since 2010.

That's around four and a half pounds of gold, worth approximately $160,000 at current market rates.

The recording also offered five million Yemeni riyals to anyone who kills an American soldier within Yemen. That's about $23,000.

The SITE Intelligence group, which analyzed the recording, quoted Al Qaeda, who said their motivation was "to encourage our Muslim Ummah (nation), and to expand the circle of the jihad (holy war) by the masses."

Insurgents and militants are influential and powerful in Yemen, after the longtime dictator was toppled by protests during the Arab Spring.

But true democracy has not yet come to Yemen, and the country is in the process of writing its Constitution, while fending off attempts at violent revolution by fundamentalists.

The Yemeni arm of Al Qaeda is considered the most dangerous branch of that group still remaining.

The turmoil has made life difficult for the Yemeni people, a fact that Al Qaeda preys upon when recruiting. The massive rewards offered for assassinations encourage the poor and young who feel they have nothing to lose and who foster no particular love for Americans.

Rather than use the massive sums to improve infrastructure or buy food -- Yemen is expected to experience a food shortage soon -- Al Qaeda buys bombs and guns.

The bounties will be in place for six months, according to the recording.