Female captives shot dead in Yemen

Three female hostages, two Germans and one South Korean who were kidnapped along with six other foreigners, were found dead in northern Yemen yesterday, an official at the interior ministry said.

"We have found the corpses of three women... who were kidnapped alongside six others," the official told the website www.26sep.net, which is linked to the defence ministry.

Earlier reports by security officials yesterday said seven foreign hostages including a child had been found murdered in northern Yemen, the first time in a decade that such a kidnapping has resulted in deaths.

"We have found the corpses of seven people who were kidnapped ... They were killed," an official said, adding that two of the three children captured with the group were reportedly found alive. The bodies were found by the son of a tribal leader in Noshour, east of the volatile Saada mountainous area of northern Yemen where the nine were abducted, the official said. A source close to an investigation into the killings said initial examinations showed the hostages were shot dead and their corpses had marks of knife stabs.

The authorities had accused Shiite Zaidi rebels in Saada of seizing seven Germans, a British engineer and a South Korean woman teacher. The rebels denied the charge.

The nine - among them three German children and two female nurses - belong to an international relief group that has worked at a hospital in Saada province bordering Saudi Arabia for 35 years, an official said on Sunday.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the kidnapping - the latest in a string of abductions of foreigners in one of the poorest countries in the world.

In Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel said she could not confirm the reported deaths of hostages. "We are pressing ahead for examination of this information. For the moment, I cannot give any confirmation," she said.

South Korea's foreign ministry also said it had no information and was checking the report. Seoul had confirmed that a 34-year-old South Korean identified only by her family name Eom had been missing in Yemen since last Thursday evening when she joined other members of the relief group for a walk.

Local sources said the group was a Christian Baptist organisation that also has a medical team in the hospital at Jebla, south of Sanaa, where an Islamist militant killed three American doctors in December 2002.

A Yemeni official on Sunday said the group was taken hostage by members of the Huthi Zaidi rebel group which has been fighting the government since 2004.

But a rebel spokesman dismissed the accusation as "baseless", and said the kidnapping took place in an area controlled by security forces in the town of Saada.

Mohammed Abdelsalam, a media officer for the Huthi, blamed the abduction on "people linked to the government and who are trying to stir up the situation because they are benefitting from our war" with the government.