Three Red Cross workers kidnapped in Yemen

Street cleaners in Yemen: the Swiss foreign ministry advises against visiting the country Keystone

Armed Yemeni tribesmen have kidnapped three people – one said to be Swiss – working for the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in the southern province of Abyan, according to a Yemeni security source.

The aid workers were taken on Monday from a vehicle in the city of Jaar and there had been no demands from the tribesmen, the security source said.

ICRC spokeswoman Dibeh Fakhr confirmed that two international staff and a locally hired employee had been taken in the vicinity of Jaar. She didn’t want to comment on the nationalities of the workers for reasons of security.

“The situation is very delicate. We are neither confirming nor denying that one of them is Swiss,” she said.

She said the three were alive and “hopefully unharmed”, adding that the organisation was negotiating for their release. She says she assumes the kidnappers might be the same group involved in a similar incident last week.

Kidnappings of Westerners in Yemen are mostly carried out by al-Qaeda militants or tribesmen.

No go

Yemen’s president warned last week that the al-Qaeda branch in the country was expanding and using assassinations and abductions of foreigners as a way to challenge the central authority.

Lawlessness in the Arabian Peninsula state has alarmed its neighbour and top world oil exporter Saudi Arabia, as well as the United States, which increasingly views Yemen as a front line in its struggle against al Qaeda.

The Swiss foreign ministry website advises against visiting or staying in Yemen. It also encourages Swiss nationals to leave the country for the time being and to take all necessary precautions.

A Swiss woman held for nearly a year in Yemen was freed by her kidnappers and flown to Doha in February following mediation by Qatar. Armed tribesmen had kidnapped the teacher in the western Yemeni city of Hudaida in March 2012 to press the Sanaa government to free jailed relatives, a Yemeni official said.