March 17, 2012 (AFP)
ADEN — Yemeni security forces were
on Saturday hunting for suspected Al-Qaeda gunmen who abducted a Swiss woman
this week with no immediate leads in sight, a security official said.
"We are pursuing our search
but so far we have not been able to locate where the Swiss woman is being held
or know anything about her fate," a security official in southern Shabwa
province told AFP.
He said that three suspects were
detained overnight as part of the investigation.
On Friday a local official said
suspected Al-Qaeda gunmen seized the woman in the Red Sea port of Hodeida and
then moved her to restive Shabwa province further to the east.
The Swiss foreign ministry
confirmed the abduction and said it had been informed the woman had been
kidnapped late Wednesday and were trying to seek her release.
The Yemeni interior ministry,
quoting a Swiss colleague of the woman, said she had been teaching at a foreign
language institute in Hodeida and was seized at home by "men in military
uniform" who moved her to Shabwa.
The colleague identified her as
34-year-old Sylvia Abrahat, according to the transliteration from Arabic of a
name posted by the ministry on its website.
According to the report, the
kidnapped woman telephoned her colleague to say her abductors are demanding
"the release of prisoners held in Hodeida" in return for her freedom.
The local official who announced
the abduction on Friday said at the time that the kidnappers were
"demanding the release of two Al-Qaeda militants detained in
Hodeida."
Later a security official said
"the kidnapping bears the hallmark of Al-Qaeda".
According to him, only a
well-organised group such as Al-Qaeda could have undertaken such an operation,
which involved moving the Swiss woman across three provinces.
Shabwa is a stronghold of
loyalists of the jihadists' local affiliate Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,
or AQAP, whose militants fight under the banner of Partisans of Sharia (Islamic
law).
A tribal source said the woman was
being held in a mountainous area of Shabwa adjoining Bayda province.
"Contacts are under way in an
attempt to secure the woman's release," he told AFP, without detailing the
nature of the contacts.
The source named the men whose
release is wanted by the kidnappers as Ahmed Mohammed Morjan and Faez Mohammed
Aliwa -- both said to be detained from criminal issues.
Overnight Friday authorities
arrested Morjan's father, a brother and a cousin to quiz them on any
involvement in the abduction, the security official said.
More than 200 people have been
abducted in Yemen during the past 15 years, many of them by members of the country's
powerful tribes who use them as bargaining chips with the authorities.
Almost all of those kidnapped were
later freed unharmed.
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