SANAA: Six foreign hostages kidnapped this month in a restive area of northern Yemen are alive and being held by Shiite rebels, a tribal source said yesterday, after three other hostages were found dead last week.
"The six hostages were found alive and handed over to (rebel) commander Abdullah Al-Rizani," the tribal source told AFP.
"They are currently in the Ruzmat area" of Saada province, the center of the rebellion in the mountains near the Saudi border, he added. The source said that the rebels had identified the kidnappers as being two of their own fighters — Mohsen Al-Tam and Fawaz Morqi. A Yemeni security official said he too had information that the hostages were alive and in the hands of the rebels.
"The rebels are refusing to hand over either the hostages or their kidnappers," the official told AFP.
The hostages — five Germans and one Briton — were part of a group of nine foreigners whose abduction the Yemeni authorities announced on June 14.
The bodies of the three women hostages — two Germans and a South Korean — were found on June 15. Yemeni Interior Minister Motahar Al-Masri had said on Saturday that the other hostages might still be alive.
"The information we have is that no bodies of any one of the six hostages were found and there is a possibility that they are still alive," he said. German Foreign Ministry spokesman Andreas Peschke said he was aware of “rumors” that the six were alive but could not immediately confirm them.
The Yemeni authorities have repeatedly blamed the abduction and murders on the rebels from Yemen's Shiite minority.
The rebels yesterday again denied any involvement in the kidnappings or the murders. “This information is baseless... perhaps even intelligence leaks whose objective is to hinder the investigation,” rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdelsalam told the Doha-based Al-Jazeera television channel.
"We do not have any information and the authorities are responsible for what is happening and what has befallen the hostages." The nine foreigners worked for Worldwide Services, which has been operating a hospital in Saada for the past 35 years, according to Yemeni officials. The Brake Bible school in Lemgo, Germany said the two slain Germans were third-year students who had been doing work experience at the hospital in Saada since the start of June.
Surces said the group was a Baptist organization that also has a medical team in the hospital at Jebla, south of Sanaa, where a militant killed three American doctors in December 2002.
Foreigners are often kidnapped in Yemen by tribesmen to be used as bargaining chips in disputes with the government. More than 200 foreigners have been abducted over the past 15 years.
