Shepherds found the mutilated bodies on Monday of two German nurses and a South Korean teacher who were kidnapped while picnicking in an area of Yemen known as a hideout for al-Qaeda.
Experts said the killings bore the hallmarks not of local tribesmen but of jihadist militants who had returned home after fighting in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
The women disappeared in the remote northern province of Saada on Friday while on an outing with six other foreigners, including a German doctor, his wife and their three young children. The whereabouts of the six were unknown, the Yemeni government said.
PHOTO: EPA
Yemeni authorities announced a state of high alert in the area and were “conducting extensive searches and investigations,” a government statement said.
Besides the German family, a British man was also missing.
They all worked for World Wide Services Foundation, a Dutch aid group.
“Preparations are underway for the transfer to Sanaa of the bodies of the two Germans and the South Korean ahead of their repatriation,” Ali al-Qatabri, the director of Saada’s al-Jumhuriya hospital, told reporters.
In Seoul, Foreign Ministry Spokesman Choe Jong-hyun said yesterday the government “cannot contain its anger and shock” at the slayings. The South Korean woman was identified as a 34-year-old aid worker, although Yemeni officials described her as a teacher.
The Yemeni government blamed the kidnapping on a Shiite rebel group that has been leading an uprising in the province for the past several years, but the group denied it had anything to do with it.
Initially, Yemeni security officials had reported all nine were killed, but the government later said six were still missing.
Security forces pressed on with the manhunt for the six missing people yesterday.
“The security forces are continuing a huge search operation in Saada Province to track down the kidnappers of the nine foreign nationals,” an interior ministry official told reporters.
Nearly all past fatal attacks against foreigners in Yemen have been by Islamist militants.
“I think that it would have to be outside sources” that carried out the attack, said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College, noting that the killings, including reports that the bodies were mutilated, bear the hallmarks of al-Qaeda.
The killings “represent a nasty turning point in Yemen,” he said.
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