Twenty seamen, including five Bangladeshis, have been under detention of Houthi rebels in Yemen for nine months.

Of the captured men, 13 are Indians and two are Egyptians, said a report published by Indian newspaper The New Indian Express on Sunday.

Houthi rebels detained the seamen in Yemen's capital Sana's in February this year.

The detainees are crew of three ships which set off to Saudi Arabia from Oman but anchored off Yemen coast.

Sana’a is under the control of Houthis as civil war is raging in Yemen. Houthis have a long history of kidnapping foreign nations for ransom.

The Houthi insurgency in Yemen, also known as the Houthi rebellion, was a military rebellion pitting Zaidi Shia Houthis (though the movement also includes Sunnis) against the Yemeni military that began in Northern Yemen and has since escalated into a full-scale civil war. 

The conflict was sparked in 2004 by the government's attempt to arrest Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, a Zaidi religious leader of the Houthis and a former parliamentarian on whose head the government had placed a $55,000 bounty.

Source: The New Indian Express 

BDST: 1630 HRS, NOV 29, 2020
AP/SMS