Gunmen Abduct Iranian Embassy Worker in Yemeni Capital
By REUTERS
SANAA - Armed men kidnapped an employee of the Iranian embassy in Yemen's
capital Sanaa on Sunday, police sources said, the latest in a series of
abductions of foreigners in the lawless Arab country.
The Iranian man was travelling through the diplomatic quarter in southern
Sanaa when gunmen blocked the road, forced him to get out of his vehicle and
took him to an unknown location, the sources told Reuters.
It was not immediately clear who carried out the kidnapping, they said.
Iran's Foreign Ministry confirmed that member of its embassy's
administrative staff in Sanaa named Nour Ahmad Nikbakht has been kidnapped,
the ISNA news agency reported, quoting a ministry spokesman.
Yemen's government is grappling with a host of challenges, including a
separatist movement in the south and an Islamist insurgency, as it tries to
restore authority lost during mass protests in 2011 that overthrew the
veteran president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Disgruntled tribesmen also often take hostages to press the government to
free jailed relatives or improve public services.
A Saudi diplomat based in Yemen's southern port city of Aden has been held
hostage by Islamist militants linked to al Qaeda since March 2012.
In a separate incident, an instructor in Yemen's military academy was killed
by a bomb placed under his car in Sanaa on Sunday, the Yemeni Defense
Ministry said on its website.
It said Brigadier General Abdullah Hussein al-Mehdar had been killed
instantly.
At least 70 military and security officials have been killed since 2011, and
many of the attacks have been attributed to militants linked to al Qaeda.
Also on Sunday, a local official in the southerly Baida'a governorate was
shot dead outside his house by gunmen suspected of being linked to al Qaeda,
security sources told Reuters.
(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari in Sanaa and Marcus George in Dubai; Writing
by Sami Aboudi and Maha El Dahan; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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