Filipina nurse freed hours after abduction in Yemen

SANAA // Yemeni security services freed a Filipina nurse two hours after she was kidnapped in Sanaa yesterday, and two suspected abductors have been arrested.

"Security services arrested two outlaws after they kidnapped a Filipina national late on Sunday in the capital Sanaa," the state news agency Saba quoted an interior ministry spokesman as saying.

The men were arrested within two hours of the abduction, the source said, identifying the hostage as Annie Jones, 20, a nurse at a government hospital in Sanaa. She was released unharmed, according to the spokesman. The kidnap was the second abduction of foreigners in Sanaa within a 48-hour period.

Security forces are still searching for two Finns and an Austrian who were kidnapped in the capital on Friday. Authorities suspect Al Qaeda-linked militants of being behind that kidnapping.

A security official last week warned that Al Qaeda had threatened to kidnap foreigners and to stage bank hold-ups if the authorities failed to release colleagues who are in jail.