American oil worker is kidnapped in Yemen

An American oil worker was abducted from his car by unidentified gunmen on a busy street in the Yemeni capital, his wife and colleagues said on Monday.

The American, Danny Lavone Burch, 63, had spent years in Yemen working as an engineer at a Yemeni oil company when he was abducted on Saturday morning.

“They did it in broad daylight in front of everyone,” Nadia Forsa, Mr. Burch’s wife, said by phone from Sana, the capital.

Many Westerners have been abducted over the years in Yemen, a poor country on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula that has long been roiled by civil conflicts.

Armed groups, including a powerful affiliate of Al Qaeda and the Houthi rebels who control Sana, have abducted foreigners to extract ransoms from their governments or because they accuse them of being spies.

Read the whole story from The New York Times.