Yemeni president's office director kidnapped: official

Unidentified gunmen snatched the director of the Yemeni presidential office in the capital Sanaa on Saturday, an Interior Ministry official told Xinhua.

Ahmad Awad bin Mubarak, director of Yemeni President Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi's office, along with his bodyguards were intercepted by gunmen on their way to the secretariat of the National Dialogue Monitoring Committee, the official said on condition of anonymity.

"He was assigned by President Hadi to hand over the draft of Yemen's new constitution to the secretariat of the monitoring committee to approve it before it goes to public," the official said.

He added that the incident occurred at a new checkpoint close to bin Mubarak's house, where a group of tribal gunmen on three military pickups had been waiting for bin Mubarak.

They confiscated all phones of bin Mubarak and his bodyguards before taking him along with the draft of the new constitution to an unknown location.

No group has yet announced responsibility for the kidnapping, but officials told local media that Shiite Houthi militia, who took over Sanaa in September, had rejected the draft and had disputes with bin Mubarak.

According to the draft constitution, Yemen will be divided into six federal regions. However, the Houthis have been demanding to divide the country only into two.

Bin Mubarak was named by President Hadi as prime minister in November, but the Shiite Houthi group rejected him and forced Hadi to replace him with the current prime minister, Khaled Bahah.

The Shiite Houthi group, based in the far northern province of Saada, has been expanding influence southward after signing a UN-sponsored peace and power-sharing deal on Sept. 21, 2014. The deal put an end to week-long deadly clashes and also empowered the Houthi rebels to play an important role in the government. Endit