SANAA: Tribesmen freed a German oil expert and his Yemeni companions yesterday, two days after they kidnapped them in southern Yemen, the state news agency reported.
The agency quoted an Interior Ministry source as saying that the freed hostages were expected in the capital Sanaa later in the day.
Armed tribesmen kidnapped the German oil expert and two Yemeni engineers on Sunday as they were heading to their work site near the Arabian Sea port of Balhaf in Shabwa. The abductors, who belong to the Laqmoush tribe, were demanding the release of a jailed fellow tribesman.
A security source close to the negotiations with the kidnappers confirmed the release to Arab News and said the three hostages were handed over to a military official dispatched from Sanaa. He said the freed hostages were taken on a military convoy to Ataq, the provincial capital of Shabwa, 570 km southeast of Sanaa.
The source said a breakthrough was reached in negotiations between the government and the kidnappers after the intervention of Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh’s half-brother and military commander Ali Mouhssien Al-Ahmar.
Al-Ahmar made pledges to the abductors to discuss their demands in exchange for releasing the hostages, said the source, who asked not to be named.
A military envoy was dispatched by Al-Ahmar to receive the hostages from the kidnappers.
Security sources said earlier yesterday that the army and security forces surrounded a remote mountain village in southern Yemen where the tribesmen were holding hostage the German expert and two local engineers. The sources said armored personnel carriers and patrol vehicles laid siege to the Khubar Laqmoush village in the southeastern province of Shabwa.
They said the forces were sent to the area to put pressure on the kidnappers to set the hostages free, and that authorities did not intend use force.
The German hostage works as a pipeline expert for Amecspie Hawk, a subcontractor with Yemen LNG Ltd. that runs the project.
Amecspie Hawk is building a 320-km-long pipeline form the oil refinery in the north-central province of Marib to the LNG exporting port of Balhaf.
