Karachi, Pakistan ? Pakistani police have arrested six men linked to al-Qaida, including a Yemeni man wanted in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks and the bombing of the USS Cole, an Interior Ministry official said Wednesday.

The country’s interior minister said the arrests this week prevented “a major terrorist attack.”

Waleed Mohammed Bin Attash, best known as Tawfiq bin Attash or Tawfiq Attash Khallad, was arrested Tuesday during a pair of raids conducted in southern Karachi by Pakistani authorities.

“This is a big catch. Attash is wanted in the USS Cole bombing,” said Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, the head of Pakistan’s counterterrorism unit. “I think he is very important.”

U.S. counterterrorism officials in Washington confirmed the capture of the suspect, also known as Khallad, and described him as one of the most-wanted al-Qaida fugitives. Khallad was active in plotting new attacks, the officials said on condition of anonymity.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President Bush was grateful to Pakistan for a “hopeful and significant capture.”

“It’s been another strong day of Pakistani cooperation in the war against terror,” he said.

A CIA officer once described Khallad as a “major-league killer.”

U.S. intelligence officials said that Khallad was suspected of meeting with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in January 2000. Those hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were on the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

Khallad was in Afghanistan for much of the planning of the attacks and was believed to have moved to Pakistan by late 2002, officials said.

He also is believed to have helped plan the suicide attack of the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors. The American destroyer was rammed Oct. 12, 2000, by an explosives-laden dinghy while refueling in the Yemeni port of Aden. Yemen is the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden and the attack was blamed on al-Qaida.

The names of the other suspects were not immediately known, although Interior Minister Saleh Faisal Hayyat said one suspect was the nephew of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, said Hayyat.

Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan in March.

Pakistani authorities also recovered 330 pounds of explosives and a large quantity of arms, ammunitions and detonators “intended to be used for terrorist attacks,” said a statement by Cheema’s National Crisis Management Cell.