NINE HOSTAGES captured by Shia rebels in a mountainous region of northern Yemen have been killed, according to a security official.
The group of foreign nationals, mostly women and children, were captured in the north-west of the country on Friday. Yesterday tribal leaders said the bodies of three of the group had been found. A Yemeni security official later told Associated Press that a further six bodies had been discovered and that all nine were dead.
The group, made up of seven Germans, including five children, a Briton and a South Korean, had been picnicking in the province of Saada, the Yemeni interior ministry said. Their names have not been released.
State-run media in Yemen said the foreigners had been working at the Jumhuri hospital for an international humanitarian group that has worked there since 1974.
On Friday, 24 local and foreign medics working at a Saudi-funded hospital were released, less than a day after a different group had kidnapped them.
Yemen is the Arab world’s poorest country and is struggling with a secessionist movement in the south, an on-off revolt in the north, and intensified al-Qaeda militancy.
More than 200 foreign nationals have been kidnapped in Yemen in the last 15 years. Most have been released unharmed.
Yemen’s interior ministry said initial information indicated that the Huthi Zaidi rebel group was responsible for the kidnapping.
“It is the Huthi group’s style to perpetrate such an act of abduction of foreigners,” it said.
But a spokesman for the rebel group described the accusation as baseless, AFP reported.
He said: “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.”
Saada, which borders Saudi Arabia, has seen sporadic fighting between government troops and Zaidi rebels. Zaidis belong to an offshoot of Shia Islam. They are a minority in mainly Sunni Muslim Yemen but make up the majority in the north-west of the country.
Thousands of people have died since the Zaidis began a rebellion against government troops in Saada in 2004. They are accused of trying to seize power and impose religious law. A fragile truce was agreed last year.
A number of westerners have previously been killed. In 2000 a Norwegian was killed in crossfire and in 1998 four westerners died during a botched attempt to free them. (– Guardianservice)