RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi forces rescued two German girls kidnapped nearly a year ago with their parents in Yemen, as mediators also secured the release of two Chinese engineers taken days earlier by Yemeni tribesmen, officials said today.
Kidnappings are endemic in Yemen and are usually done by disgruntled tribesmen hoping to wrangle concessions from the government. In the past few years, however, al-Qaida has begun kidnapping foreigners as well, often with lethal results.
The German family was believed to have been kidnapped by a group affiliated to al-Qaida and the fate of the parents as well as their son, remains unknown. Three others kidnapped with them have turned up dead.
A relative of the kidnapped family acting as a spokesman said they were assuming that the missing boy was dead as well.
“We are happy and relieved that both daughters are free. But we have to assume that the son is no longer alive,” The Rev. Reinhard Poetschke told German news agency DAPD.
Yemen has blamed the abductions on the country’s resurgent al-Qaida offshoot, though the group has issued no claim of responsibility.
Germany said the girls were in good health and would be flown home on Wednesday.
Poetschke said the family would take care of the girls at an undisclosed location and hopes to protect them from media attention. “The children now need peace to come to terms with what happened,” he said. “It will already be difficult enough for them.”
The German couple and their three young children went missing last June along with a British man in the northern Yemeni region of Saada. Two German women and a Korean woman who also disappeared with them were found dead soon after.
Today, Saudi Interior Ministry spokesman Mansour al-Turki said Saudi intelligence forces, after coordinating with Yemen, freed the two girls along the Yemeni border. The operation did not involve any fighting, he said.
He gave no other details on the operation or on the fate of the other family members.
Germany’s foreign minister welcomed the news and said officials were working to clarify the situation of the girls’ parents and a third sibling who were not freed.
“We are relieved that Saudi Arabian security forces were able to free two of our five kidnapped citizens in Yemen,” Guido Westerwelle said in a statement.
“Our efforts to finally have clarity over the other hostages’ situation remain unchanged,” Westerwelle said. “We are concerned about their fate. We hope for a happy end for them and continue to put all of our efforts toward this goal.”
The girls’ parents worked in a state-run hospital in Saada, near the Saudi border, since 2003.
The family’s names have not been released by German authorities, who say doing so could hamper efforts to secure their release. A German newspaper, Saechsische Zeitung, has said the couple were from the eastern German state of Saxony and reported the two girls are ages 4 and 6.
Saudi Arabia increased its military presence along Yemen’s borders late last year after anti-government Yemeni fighters killed two Saudi soldiers along the frontier. That drew Saudi Arabia’s armed forces into the Yemeni government’s off-and-on battle against a Shiite rebellion in the country’s north.
Amid the widening security vacuum, Al-Qaida has steadily increased its presence in impoverished Yemen, especially after several of its leaders escaped from prison there in 2006. Last year, the Yemeni militants joined forces with al-Qaida’s Saudi militants to form al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.
In contrast, the case of the Chinese petroleum engineers was resolved in the usual fashion for tribal kidnappings, with mediators resolving the situation after just a couple of days.
Ali Hassan al-Ahmadi, the governor of Shabwa where the kidnapping took place on Sunday, told The Associated Press by telephone that mediators had reached an agreement with the kidnappers and the engineers were on their way back to the provincial capital of Attaq.
He added that the kidnappers demanded the government take action against policemen who recently wounded a member of the tribe at a checkpoint. He did not say if the demand had been approved.
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