SANAA, Yemen – Three Al-Jazeera journalists who were abducted in the war-ravaged Yemeni city of Taiz have been released, the network said in a statement on Thursday as one of the released reporters accused Shiite rebels of being behind the kidnapping.
The network said that reporter Hamdi al-Bokari and crew members Abdulaziz al-Sabri and Moneer al-Sabai were freed. Al-Bokari wrote on his Facebook page that he was abducted by Houthis and that they were subjected to “terrible mental torture” without elaboration.
Yemen’s civil war began when Shiite rebels known as Houthis took control of the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014. In March, a coalition of countries led by Saudi Arabia began airstrikes and later, a ground operation to retake the country from the Houthis, who are allied with forces loyal to Yemen’s former president and have received support from Iran.
Journalists have been frequently targeted in Yemen’s conflict. A day before the disappearance of the Al-Jazeera journalists, a 35-year-old reporter Almigdad Mohammed Ali Mojalli, who contributed to the Voice of America, Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper and the Nairobi-based Integrated Regional Information Networks, was killed in an apparent Saudi-led airstrike outside of Sanaa.
The province of Taiz sits in the country’s rugged interior mountains and its nearly three million residents have been caught in fighting between Houthis besieging the city and pro-government fighters backed by heavy airstrikes from the Saudi-led military coalition.
For months, residents and aid groups say the Houthis have been indiscriminately shelling Taiz and blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid there. While al-Bokari blames Houthis, Taiz’s local militias include militants from al-Qaida’s offshoot in Yemen in addition to hardline Salafi Muslims whom some activists blamed for the abduction in recent days.