Yemeni troops have freed an Italian UN staffer and his driver, hours after they were abducted from a diplomatic district of the capital, the interior ministry says.
The Italian UN Development Program employee was "in good" health" after his ordeal, the latest in a spate of abductions of Westerners in Yemen in recent months, a ministry official told AFP.
The kidnappers were stopped at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Sanaa where they were arrested and the hostages freed, the official said.
He did not elaborate on the kidnappers' identity or motives.
Hundreds of people have been abducted in Yemen over the years, the vast majority by disgruntled tribesmen who use their hostages as bargaining chips with the central government and release them unharmed.
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But in the past couple of years, Al-Qaeda's Yemen affiliate, regarded by Washington as its most dangerous, has brought a new, more threatening twist to the kidnappings.
The pair were seized from their car in the heavily patrolled Hada district of south Sanaa, where several embassies are located.
The kidnappers used a van and a taxi to sandwich the vehicle and then sped off with their hostages, witnesses said.
"The two people abducted were employees of the UN Development Program," a source at the UN agency in Sanaa told AFP.
In Rome, the foreign ministry confirmed that one of the two UN staff was Italian.
