Yemeni security official found dead, day after abduction

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — A senior Yemeni security official was found dead on Wednesday in the southern port city of Aden, a day after unknown armed men abducted him outside his home, officials said.

According to the officials, Brig. Ibrahim Harad was taken late on Tuesday in front of his house in Aden’s Buraiqeh district.

His body was found in the same district on Wednesday, with multiple bullet wounds, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the abduction and killing of Harad, who was head of political security in the strategic port city of Hodeida.

Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest nation, has been convulsed by civil war since 2014, when the Iran-backed Houthi rebels took control of the country’s north, including the capital, Sanaa. A Saudi-led military coalition intervened the following year in efforts to restore the internationally recognized Yemeni government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to power.

The conflict has killed over 112,000 people and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, leaving millions suffering from food and medical care shortages.

Harad’s killing came less than a month after members of Yemen's internationally recognized returned from self-imposed exile Saudi Arabia to Aden, following a Saudi-brokered power-sharing deal with the United Arab Emirates-backed southern separatists.

That deal ended months of fierce clashes between the government forces and the UAE-backed separatists, two nominal allies in the anti-Houthi coalition.