UAE says army frees British hostage held in Yemen

The UAE said Semple was freed during a military intelligence operation and taken to Aden before being flown by UAE military aircraft to Abu Dhabi.

The Foreign Office confirmed the hostage had been freed, with Secretary Philip Hammond thanking the UAE for their help.

Hammond added that the freed hostage was “safe and well” and that Britain was “very grateful for the assistance of the UAE”.

A bomb destroyed the secret police headquarters in Aden on Saturday, residents of the southern Yemen city said, in an attack that one official blamed on Al-Qaeda. He was greeted at the airport by the British ambassador and taken for medical checks at a hospital, the statement said.

It said Semple, 64, had been working as a petroleum engineer in the Yemeni province of Hadramawt when he was kidnapped in February 2014. The Houthis overran the capital of Sanaa previous year and eventually forced the Yemeni president into exile in Saudi Arabia.

The UAE is involved alongside Saudi Arabian forces in combating the Iran-supported Shiite Houthi rebels and allied units of Yemen’s fractured military as the country collapses into chaos.

The war has killed almost 4,500 people, many of them civilians, according to the United Nations.

He said: “I’m so pleased for the family of the British hostage in Yemen – who has been released safe and well”.

Hundreds of kilometres away in Yemen’s other Arabian Sea port city of Mukalla, residents and local officials said four al-Qaeda militants – two Saudis, a Yemeni and an Afghan – were killed in a suspected US drone strike.

Kidnappings of citizens from western countries by Islamist groups are common as they fetch hefty ransoms.