DUBAI: The UAE is holding suspected Qatari intelligence agents for questioning on their activities in the UAE, an Emirati newspaper has said.

A Qatari newspaper reported earlier this week that Emirati authorities had detained and subjected to torture three Qatari citizens who were on holiday in the UAE.

On its front page the Arabic-language Al-Khaleej newspaper dismissed the assertion that those arrested were tourists, quoting unnamed sources as saying that authorities were holding “Qatari intelligence elements operating on UAE soil.” “They are currently undergoing questioning,” the privately owned newspaper, one of the oldest in the UAE, said, without giving further details.

Qatar made no direct comment on the earlier report that its citizens had been detained, but in an apparent allusion to the case, the Foreign Ministry said on its Twitter account earlier this week that the state “did not abandon its sons and was taking all measures through legal and diplomatic channels.”

“What happened is just a reflection of the very tense relationship between Qatar and the UAE, and (one should) expect more things like this to happen in the near future,” an Arab diplomat in Doha told Reuters.