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United Kingdom Two US women rescued from rebel-held Yemen
Two American women have been “rescued from captivity” in Yemen’s rebel-held capital and flown out of the country in a joint US-Saudi military operation, Saudi officials said on Friday.
wo American women have been “rescued from captivity” in Yemen’s rebel-held capital and flown out of the country in a joint US-Saudi military operation, Saudi officials said on Friday.
he US State Department confirmed it helped the two women get out of Yemen but gave no details, while a rebel official said they had “escaped” but not in a rescue operation.
he young women were “mistreated and had restrictions imposed on their movements” after visiting relatives in Sanaa, which was seized by the Iran-backed Huthi rebels in 2014, according to Riyadh.
“Two young American women were freed from captivity, evacuated, and transported from the Huthi-controlled Yemeni capital Sanaa to the interim capital Aden, and later on to Riyadh,” Saudi defence ministry spokesperson Turki al-Malki said in a statement.
he women were evacuated to Riyadh where they were met by US officials and received health checks, the statement said.
In Washington, the State Department said: “We assisted with the safe departure of two US citizens from an area of Yemen currently under Huthi control.”
“We express our appreciation to our Saudi and Yemeni government partners for their assistance in facilitating their safe departure. Due to privacy considerations, we have nothing further.”
In Sanaa, the interior ministry spokesman of the unrecognised rebel government, Abdul-Khaleq al-Ajri, said the two women had organised their own escape.
Reports of Saudi-US security cooperation were “baseless”, he said in a statement published by rebel media.
He gave their names as sisters Zahraa and Samiha Amin Abdul Karim Sufyan, who last month had married two brothers seeking American nationality in return for a “dowry” of $61,000.
he women had coordinated their escape “with two men who transported them to Aden” in government-held southern Yemen, he said, without specifying if they were of Yemeni origin.
Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, is wracked by war between the Huthis and a Saudi-led coalition fighting on behalf of the internationally recognised government.