Spanish policeman missing in Yemen

MADRID/ADEN: A Spanish policeman who was deployed at Madrid’s embassy in Yemen has gone missing, his family and Spain’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday, with a newspaper reporting he has been kidnapped.
Antonio Cejudo, 38, went missing on Thursday, a day before he was due to arrive back in Spain for a holiday, his brother Javier Cejudo said in a statement posted on his blog.
The online edition of daily newspaper ABC said the policeman was kidnapped by an unknown group as he made his way to the airport in the Yemeni capital Sanaa in a taxi.
But Javier said its was “premature” to say his brother had been kidnapped.
“It seems unfounded to state that my brother was kidnapped by a group while he headed to the airport,” he wrote on his blog.
“We don’t know where he is, his mobile telephone is turned off, we can’t reach him,” he added via his Twitter account.
The policeman has worked at Spainish Embassy in the restive Arabian Peninsula state for the past two years.
A Spanish Foreign Ministry official confirmed that a policeman who was deployed at the embassy was missing but did not provide details.
Spain’s foreign and interior ministries were working with Yemeni authorities to locate the officer, he added.
Separately, Yemen's army and air force supported by local militiamen and with US backing pressed an offensive to expel Al-Qaeda from their southern bastions, with fighting concentrated around the town of Jaar yesterday. "Violent clashes on Jaar's western outskirts between the army and Al-Qaeda are continuing," a military official said.
Residents said the Yemeni air force launched four strikes on Al-Rabwa, at Jaar's western entrance, and that they saw militants using vehicles to take away the bodies of several militants killed.
Thirteen jihadists were killed overnight, according to tribal sources, while witnesses said 18 vehicles loaded with Al-Qaeda militants were brought in from Azzan in the eastern Shabwa province to reinforce their comrades in Jaar.
Five militiamen fighting alongside the army were also killed and four wounded, the military official said, without giving army casualties.
Residents and tribes in the area surrounding Jaar have formed armed militias, Popular Resistance Committees, to back the army, similar to those formed in other Abyan towns — Loder and Mudia.