SANAA: Nine foreigners, including women and children, were kidnapped in northern Yemen, an official said yesterday amid conflicting reports over their fate.
Seven Germans, a British engineer and a South Korean woman teacher were seized by rebels in the Saada region, a local official cited on the Defense Ministry website, said, but a rebel spokesman denied any involvement. The group — including a German couple, three children and two women nurses — belong to an international relief group that has been working at a hospital in Saada for 35 years, the official said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the kidnapping and it was not immediately clear when it took place.
Security sources told Arab News that the nine people went missing in mysterious circumstances after they went on an excursion south of Saada on Friday.
The German engineer works for the state-run Al-Jumhori hospital in Saada, and the British man and the Korean woman were visiting their German friends when taken hostage.
Local sources in Saada said the group might have been abducted by armed tribesmen.
Seoul confirmed that a South Korean woman, identified by her family name Eom, 34, had been missing since Thursday evening in Yemen when she joined members of the relief group for a walk.
“It is presumed that a South Korean woman has been kidnapped by a local armed group. That is the government’s official position for now,” a Foreign Ministry official in Seoul told the South Korean newswire Yonhap.
In Berlin, a Foreign Ministry spokesman declined to confirm the kidnapping of its nationals, saying only that the German Embassy in Sanaa was in “close contact” with Yemeni authorities.
The British and German embassies “consider the group missing, as there has not been any contact with them since Friday evening, while reports of their kidnapping are yet to be confirmed,” a diplomat in Sanaa said.
The Yemeni official said the group was taken hostage by members of the Huthi Zaidi rebel group, which have been fighting the government since 2004. But a rebel spokesman dismissed the accusation as “baseless.”
“It is a government conspiracy to tarnish the Huthis’ reputation... It has never happened that a member of the Huthi followers committed such a shameful act.”
