US urges Yemen’s Houthis to free US Embassy’s local staff

By SAMY MAGDY
Associated Press

CAIRO (AP) — The United States is urging Yemen’s Houthi rebels to release all U.S. Embassy local staffers they had detained, following the death of one of them after seven months in captivity. The Iran-backed Houthis seized the headquarters of the U.S. Embassy in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa last October. They detained dozens of former staffers, many of whom were later released but at least 11 remained in the rebels’ custody. The embassy was shut down early on in the war, in 2015. In a tweet on Thursday, the embassy, now operating outside of Yemen, said it was mourning a retired USAID employee who had died in custody.