Gunmen kidnap Iranian diplomat in Yemen

Gunmen suspected of being members of al-Qaeda kidnapped an Iranian diplomat in broad daylight on Sunday in the Yemeni capital Sanaa, police said.Police said a search was under way to try to locate the man who was snatched in the street near the embassy in the southern Hadda district of the city. In Tehran, foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Araqchi told the ISNA news agency that "one of the administrative staff members of the Iranian Embassy in Yemen has been abducted by an unknown group". Iranian media said Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi had telephoned his Yemeni counterpart Abu Bakr al-Kurbi to say Tehran "condemned this inhumane act and urged the Yemen government to take serious action to release the diplomat". The reports also said that Sanaa's charge d'affaires was summoned to the foreign ministry in Tehran to hear "serious concerns regarding the fate of its diplomat". It was the first time an Iranian is known to be the victim of a kidnapping in the impoverished Arabian Peninsula country. The abduction comes at a time of tensions between mostly Sunni Muslim Yemen and Shiite Iran, which has been accused by Sanaa of aiding Shiite Zaidi rebels in north Yemen. Source: AFP