Yemen hostages 'in hands of rebels'

Six foreign hostages who were kidnapped earlier this month in a restive area of Yemen are alive, a tribal source said today.

Six foreign hostages who were kidnapped earlier this month in a restive area of Yemen are alive, a tribal source in the region said today. The source said the five Germans and one Briton were in the hands of Shiite rebels. The bodies of three women hostages - two Germans and a South Korean - were found in the volatile Saada province in northern Yemen on June 15, the day after their kidnapping was announced by the authorities.

The Yemeni interior minister Motahar al Masri had said on Saturday that the other hostages might still be alive. "The information we have is that no bodies of any one of the six hostages were found and there is a possibility that they are still alive," The government has repeatedly blamed the abduction and murders on the rebels from Yemen's Zaidi Shiite minority who have been fighting for restoration of the Zaidi imamate which was overthrown in a republican coup in 1962.

The rebels have denied the accusation. *AFP