DUBAI: The United Nations’s World Food Programme (WFP) said Tuesday that a staff member held captive by the Houthis in Yemen has died.
“WFP is grief-stricken and outraged about the death of a staff member while in detention in northern Yemen,” the agency said in a statement on X.
He was identified as a Yemeni staff member “arbitrarily detained by local authorities since 23 January,” though the circumstances of his death were not specified.
The employee, who WFP said had worked for the UN since 2017, left behind a wife and two children.
The United Nations announced the suspension Monday of its activities in Yemen’s Saada region, a Houthi stronghold, after the militia detained multiple personnel there this year.
The Iran-backed Houthis have arrested dozens of staffers from the UN and other humanitarian organizations, most of them since the middle of 2024, as Yemen’s decade-long civil war grinds on.
In January alone, the Houthis detained eight UN workers, including six in Saada, which adds to the dozens of NGO and UN personnel detained since June.
The Houthis claimed the June arrests included “an American-Israeli spy network” operating under the cover of humanitarian organizations — allegations emphatically rejected by the UN Human Rights Office.
A decade of war has plunged Yemen into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, according to the UN.
UN says staff member has died in custody of Houthis
https://arab.news/9f2us
UN says staff member has died in custody of Houthis
- “WFP is grief-stricken and outraged about the death of a staff member while in detention in northern Yemen,” the agency said
Syria ministry says gunman who killed Americans was to be fired from security forces for ‘extremism’
Syria ministry says gunman who killed Americans was to be fired from security forces for ‘extremism’
- Syrian authorities “had decided to fire him” from the security forces before the attack for holding “extremist Islamist ideas” and had planned to do so on Sunday
DAMASCUS: Syria’s interior ministry said on Sunday that the gunman who killed three Americans in the central Palmyra region the previous day was a member of the security forces who was to have been fired for extremism.
Two US troops and a civilian interpreter died in the attack on Saturday, which the US Central Command said had been carried out by an alleged Daesh group (IS) militant who was then killed.
The Syrian authorities “had decided to fire him” from the security forces before the attack for holding “extremist Islamist ideas” and had planned to do so on Sunday, interior ministry spokesman Noureddine Al-Baba told state television.
A Syrian security official told AFP on Sunday that “11 members of the general security forces were arrested and brought in for questioning after the attack.”
The official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the gunman had belonged to the security forces “for more than 10 months and was posted to several cities before being transferred to Palmyra.”
Palmyra, home to UNESCO-listed ancient ruins, was once controlled by Daesh during the height of its territorial expansion in Syria.
The incident is the first of its kind reported since Islamist-led forces overthrew longtime Syrian ruler Bashar Assad in December last year, and rekindled the country’s ties with the United States.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the soldiers “were conducting a key leader engagement” in support of counter-terrorism operations when the attack occurred, while US envoy to Syria Tom Barrack said the ambush targeted “a joint US-Syrian government patrol.”
US President Donald Trump called the incident “a Daesh attack against the US, and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” using another term for the group.
He said the three other US troops injured in the attack were “doing well.”
