Sanaa - Armed Yemeni tribesmen kidnapped three US citizens, two of them women, and were holding them in a remote valley, a colleague of one of the women said yesterday. More than 100 soldiers, supervised by the army chief-of-staff, Gen Abdallah Ali Olaiwa, had surrounded the area in the Bidbida valley, 140 km east of Sanaa, a police official said. He added that tribal dignitaries within the region had already started negotiating for the captives' release.
According to her colleague, the head of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies (AIYS) in Sanaa, Ms Marta Colburn, was seized together with her parents as they were returning to the capital. They were on a tourist trip to the central city of Taizz. Ms Colburn's husband and son remained in Sanaa.