In fields outside the village, workers walk along rows of bushes in the relative cool of the night and early morning, using headtorches to pick flowers by hand into baskets. The fragrant flower is the village’s main economic activity and source of income, employing most of the population of about 15,000 during the harvesting season between June and September. SHUBRA BELOULA, Egypt: The village of Shubra Beloula on the Nile Delta is at the heart of the jasmine industry in Egypt, which along with India is one of the world’s top two producers. Quoting a Yemeni intelligence officer, Al-Ayyam daily newspaper reported last week that American officers have participated in the current efforts to hunt down the abductors in Abyan and Hadramout.ĭespite their attempts to make a comeback in south Yemen provinces, Al-Qaeda in Yemen has suffered decisive blows over the past six years after Yemeni military forces, trained and armed by the Arab coalition, expelled them from their major urban and rural strongholds. Mohammed Al-Sharef, with American and Arab coalition counterterrorism officers. Support for the local security service was discussed last week by the first undersecretary of the interior ministry, Maj.
Yemeni officials have signaled they would seek to enlist the help of military officers from the US and Saudi Arabia. Local officials told Arab News that the militants are holding the abducted workers in rugged and mountainous areas in Abyan and threaten to execute them if the army or security services use force to release them.ĭespite the army and ministry of interior’s stern orders for hunting down the abductors, critics have cast doubt over the ability of the country’s poor security and military units to apprehend Al-Qaeda militants or drug dealers inside their safe havens in Abyan or Hadramout. Last month, the suspected Al-Qaeda militants abducted the five UN workers in Abyan’s Moudia district while heading back to their office in Aden after a field mission. The militants seek to swap the hostages with prisoners in Aden and have demanded a ransom of more than $300,000.
#AMONG US HONEYMOON HUNTDOWN FREE#
In the southern province of Abyan, local officials said on Monday that talks to secure the release of five UN workers held by suspected Al-Qaeda militants reached a deadlock as the militants refused to free the hostages before the government met their demands. The MSF said that it would shut down five out of eight mobile clinics operating in Marib and would completely withdraw support from Marib General Hospital. “We consider this as an unacceptable act of violence and we are concerned about the current exposure of the MSF teams in the area,” it added. “Medecins sans Frontieres announces the closure of some of its humanitarian activities in the Marib project, following the disappearance of two colleagues as they were on their way to the project,” the medical charity said in a statement.
The abduction prompted the MSF on Sunday into closing some of its humanitarian operations in the central city of Marib, a move that is expected to exacerbate the already dire humanitarian situation in the Yemeni city that hosts more than two million internally displaced people. Local media reports said that the abductors posed as military officers after setting up a fake checkpoint in Khoushem Al-Ain area, asked the German and Mexican workers and their Yemeni associates to board their Toyota pick-up, and quickly drove deeper into the desert. “They are a mix of drug addicts and terrorists,” the official said.Įarlier this month, unidentified men kidnapped two foreign workers with the international medical charity Doctors Without Borders in a remote area between the city of Seiyun and Aber in the province of Hadramout.
“We will be catching them sooner or later,” a senior official at the ministry of interior, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Arab News on Monday, adding that the ministry was still unaware of the abductors’ identities and demands. Security forces across the province also received similar orders from the ministry of interior to capture the abductors. The government’s security committee in Hadramout has ordered army units to remove unofficial checkpoints, intensify security measures throughout the province’s fast lands and track down the armed men who are holding two international aid workers.
AL-MUKALLA: Yemen’s military and security authorities have vowed to hunt down the abductors of aid workers in the southeastern province of Hadramout as an international aid organization reduced humanitarian activities due to security concerns.
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