Three women – two Germans and a South Korean have been found dead in north Yemen, officials said today.
Three women – two Germans and a South Korean have been found dead in north Yemen, officials said today.
The three were believed to have been shot, two sources said, in a dramatic escalation of violence that comes one day after authorities arrested a man described as al-Qaeda's top financer in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
Yemeni state news agency Saba said the three were part of a group of nine - seven Germans, a Briton and a Korean - that included three children and their mother and were kidnapped last week in the mountainous Saada region bordering Saudi Arabia.
A source said yesterday that one of the German captives was a doctor at a local hospital which the other Germans were visiting. The Briton is an engineer and the South Korean was working with an aid agency.
Two of the dead women were German nurses and one was a Korean teacher, the Yemeni military said in a statement. No claim of responsibility for the killing has been made.
If the killing was carried out by tribal forces, it would mark the first time that women hostages have been victims. Two Belgian women, however, were killed in 2008 by gunmen in an ambush that authorities blamed on al-Qaeda.
Dubai-based security analyst Fares bin Houzam said it was possible al-Qaeda was behind the latest deaths. No al-Qaeda statement claiming responsibility has been published so far.
"It's very rare for kidnappers in Yemen to kill, we have to wait to know what happened. But whoever is behind this, this is a fatal blow to security in Yemen," he said.
Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country, is struggling with a revolt in the north, a secessionist movement in the south and growing al-Qaeda militancy, which have unsettled Western governments and neighbouring Saudi Arabia. Kidnappings of Western tourists or workers by tribes is fairly common in Yemen with most incidents resolved peacefully in exchange for ransom or concessions from authorities. In this case, no tribal demands were made public.
Increasing unrest has raised concerns Yemen could slip into chaos and provide a base of operations for al-Qaeda or pirates operating in the Indian ocean.
Yemen yesterday arrested Saudi national Hassan Hussein Alwan described as al-Qaeda's top financier in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.