Staffers released in Yemen, U.N. says
CAIRO -- The United Nations said Friday five staff members who were kidnapped in Yemen 18 months ago have walked free.
In a brief statement, Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesman for U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, said all "available information suggests that all five colleagues are in good health."
Haq named the freed men as Akm Sufiul Anam; Mazen Bawazir; Bakeel al-Mahdi; Mohammed al-Mulaiki; and Khaled Mokhtar Sheikh. All worked for the U.N. Department of Security and Safety, he said.
"The secretary-general reiterates that kidnapping is an inhumane and unjustifiable crime, and calls for the perpetrators to be held accountable," Haq said.
The identity of the kidnappers was not revealed.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has been active in southern Yemen for years.
Oil successfully offloaded from old ship
NEW YORK -- The transfer of more than a million barrels of oil from an aging tanker moored off the coast of war-torn Yemen has been completed, avoiding an environmental disaster, the United Nations said Friday.
In a statement, Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, said the operation had prevented "monumental environmental and humanitarian catastrophe."
An international team began siphoning the oil from the dilapidated vessel known as SOF Safer on July 25. All of the oil is now aboard a replacement tanker called the MOST Yemen.
Before the transfer, the Safer carried four times as much oil than was spilled in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska, one of the world's worst ecological catastrophes, according to the U.N.
It is moored 3.7 miles from Yemen's western Red Sea ports of Hodeida and Ras Issa, a strategic area controlled by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels who are at war with the internationally recognized Yemeni government.
The warring sides blamed each other for blocking a salvage operation to remove the oil until a UN-led initiative succeeded in accessing the ship and raising money from international donors.
The United States welcomed the news of the operation's success and called on other countries to contribute to see the job through to the end.
Gunmen attack Syrian soldiers, killing 20
BEIRUT -- Gunmen have ambushed a bus carrying Syrian soldiers in the country's east, killing at least 20 and wounding others, opposition activists said Friday.
The Thursday night attack was believed to be carried out by members of the Islamic State group whose sleeper cells in parts of Syria still carry deadly attacks despite their defeat in 2019.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 23 Syrian soldiers were killed and 10 were wounded in the attack on a desert road near the eastern town of Mayadeen in Deir el-Zour province that borders Iraq.
Another activist collective that covers news in eastern Syria said 20 soldiers were killed and others were wounded.
Syrian state news agency SANA quoted an unnamed military official as saying that the attack occurred Thursday night, "killing and wounding a number of soldiers." It gave no further details, nor a breakdown in the casualty numbers.
Experts who follow Jihadi groups say it is too early to say if the new spate of attacks marks a new resurgence by the extremists that ruled millions of people in Syria and Iraq with terror.
Suspected spy for CIA detained in China
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- China has detained a worker from a military industrial group on suspicion of spying for the CIA, national security authorities said Friday, adding to the list of public accusations of espionage between Beijing and Washington.
The Ministry of State Security, the country's civilian spy agency, said in a statement that a military industrial worker surnamed Zeng had been providing military secrets to the CIA in exchange for large sums of money.
The 52-year-old suspect had been sent to Italy to study by his employer. There, he met "an official with the U.S. embassy," who later turned out to be a CIA agent, the ministry claimed.
"Zeng gradually developed a psychological dependence on [the U.S. official], who took the opportunity to indoctrinate him with Western values," the statement, posted on the ministry's WeChat page, read.
It added that the U.S. official promised the Chinese suspect large amounts of money and to help his family emigrate to the United States in exchange for sensitive information about China's military, which the worker had access to through his job.
"Having finished overseas study, Zeng returned to China and continued to have multiple secret meetings with the CIA agents and provided a great amount of key intelligence and collected funds for spying," the ministry said.
It added that the suspect had been detained and the case was being further investigated.
Last week, the U.S. arrested two U.S. Navy sailors on accusations of providing military secrets to China.