Tribal gunmen kidnap army colonels

On Saturday tribal gunmen kidnapped two colonels from the Yemeni army in the Shabwa province of southeast Yemen. They demanded the release of a prisoner who belongs to their tribe in exchange for the colonels’ safe return. Tribal sources in Shabwa told Arabstoday that the gunmen, belonging to Nasab tribe, had “kidnapped two officers in the Yemeni army working for the Department of Military Engineering, while they were in Shabwa in an official mission.” According to the sources the colonels are Haas Jerbana and Sadeq Malhi, and they were kidnapped as a means of pressuring the authorities in to setting free a tribesman prisoner named Hassan Albanna. The incident comes less than a week after an announcement by the Yemeni Ministry of Communications about the abduction of three of its engineers in Shabwa at the hands of tribal militants.