Houthis Attack Yemeni UN Offices, Imprisoning at Least 11 Employees

Houthi rebels broke into UN offices in Sanaa, Yemen, detained 11 staff members, and took property, the organization verified.

Houthi rebels with ties to Iran attacked UN offices in Sanaa, Yemen’s city, on Sunday and detained at least 11 UN workers, the organization confirmed.

Antonio Guterres, the secretary-general of the UN, said that the Houthis broke into the World Food Program building, took UN property, and tried to break into other agency offices in the city. In just a few days, Israel killed the prime minister of the Houthi-run government and several ministers in an attack on Sanaa.

Hans Grundberg, the UN’s Special Envoy for Yemen, said in a separate statement that the people who were being held were from both Sanaa and Hodeidah, a port city on the Red Sea. UNICEF, the UN Development Program, and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees are some of the organizations that will be impacted.

Grundberg said that what happened on Sunday is part of a worrying pattern: 23 other UN staff are still being held by the Houthis, some of them since 2021, and one of them died earlier this year.

The new arrests have made people around the world more worried about the safety of aid workers in Yemen, which already has one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world because of years of conflict.