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 The kidnapping followed that of a German by Yemeni tribesmen who
said on Sunday they had seized him two days earlier to press the
authorities to free jailed relatives.
A police source said two roadside bombs exploded near the Defence
Ministry and Central Bank on Sunday night, while a mortar bomb
landed in a district that houses the French embassy and the home of
former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Four people were wounded in the mortar blast, which damaged three
buildings and destroyed two cars, witnesses said.
One resident reported hearing gunfire after the explosions, but
details were sketchy. In December, a suicide bomb and gun attack
near the Defence Ministry killed 52 people.
Yemen, which neighbors oil giant Saudi Arabia and is home to an
ambitious al Qaeda offshoot, has long wrestled with instability,
internal conflicts and poor governance.
Mass protests in 2011 eventually forced Saleh to end his more than
three decades in power, but a political transition process has yet
to calm a rebellion by Shi'ite Muslims in the north and a
secessionist movement in the south.
The Shi'ite Houthi rebels who had carved out a northern fiefdom
before Saleh's fall have clashed in recent months with hardline
Sunni Muslim Salafis and Hashid tribal rivals.
Elsewhere, attacks blamed on al Qaeda-linked militants have grown
bolder, raising fears of a total security breakdown in Yemen, a
nation mired in corruption that has aggravated poverty.
In Monday's kidnapping, four armed men forced the Westerner out of
his car and into a waiting vehicle in Sanaa's upscale Hadda
district, witnesses said. A police source said a report of the
abduction identified the victim as a Briton. The source said the man
worked for an oil services company.
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The British embassy in Sanaa and the Foreign Office in London had no
immediate comment.
It was not immediately clear if Islamist militants or tribesmen, who
often use foreign hostages as bargaining chips to pursue demands
against the government, were behind the attack.
Efforts to stabilize Yemen hang on the post-Saleh transition and a
national reconciliation conference that ended last month.
Political factions have extended interim President Abd-Rabbu Mansour
Hadi's term by another year to give him more time to turn Yemen into
a federal state as agreed at the reconciliation talks to try to
accommodate southern demands for more autonomy.
Hadi will also oversee the drafting of a new constitution that will
form the basis of elections slated for next year.
(Additional reporting by Belinda Goldsmith in London;
writing by Yara Bayoumy and Amena Bakr; editing by Sami Aboudi and Alistair
Lyon)
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