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Houthis abduct 20 journalists in Yemen, says UN official

October 26, 2018 at 2:23 pm

Houthis in Sanaa, Yemen, 6 December 2017 [Abdullah Homran/Anadolu Agency]

The Houthi group yesterday kidnapped 20 journalists and media workers in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, a UN official said.

“Houthi militias kidnapped 20 journalists and media workers during their participation in an anti-hate speech and incitement to violence in the Yemeni media event,” the spokesperson of Yemen’s National Commission of Inquiry, affiliated to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Ishraq Al-Maqtary, told th eAnadolu Agency.

Among the abducted journalists, Al-Maqtary explained, were the former chief of the Yemeni Journalists Syndicate Abdul-Bari Tahir, Ashraf Al-Rayfi, Adel Abdulmoghni, Mohammed Shamsan, Moin Al-Najri,, Fatima Al-Aghbari, Zakaria Al-Husami and Mohammed Al-Gilani

The Houthi group has not responded to Al-Maqtary’s statements.

Read: Yemen’s Houthis arrest protesters in Sanaa

Impoverished Yemen has remained in a state of civil war since 2014, when Houthi rebels overran much of the country, including the capital Sana’a. In 2015, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a massive air campaign aimed at reversing Houthi military gains and shoring up Yemen’s embattled government.

According to UN officials, more than 10,000 people have been killed in the war, while more than 11 per cent of the country’s population has been displaced.