ADEN: Armed tribesmen briefly held two Indian employees of the international Red Cross yesterday in south Yemen, where two kidnapped Egyptians remained in captivity, the organisation and local sources told AFP.
“The Indians were released after we intervened and forced their captors to free them,” said Hussein Al Wuhayshi, a member of a pro-government militia controlling the Abyan province town of Jaar where the pair were seized.
Wuhayshi said the pair were “now on their way to Aden,” Yemen’s main southern city, after their ordeal which lasted more than three hours.
Another member of the militia earlier told AFP that “gunmen intercepted two Indian Red Cross workers in Jaar and led them at gunpoint to a mountainous region.” The local militias belong to the Popular Resistance Committees, which backed the army in chasing Al Qaeda militants out of Abyan last year. The ICRC employees were “on a humanitarian mission in Jaar, said a local source. AFP
