Houthis raid UNICEF, U.N. food agency offices in Yemen, detain 11 employees

CAIRO — Iran-backed Houthis on Sunday raided offices of the United Nations food, health and children’s agencies in Yemen’s capital, detaining 11 U.N. employees, officials said.

The rebels tightened security across Sanaa after the Israeli assassination last week of their prime minister and several Cabinet members.

Abeer Etefa, a spokesperson for the World Food Program, told the Associated Press that security forces raided the agencies’ offices in the Houthi-controlled capital Sunday morning.

“WFP reiterates that the arbitrary detention of humanitarian staff is unacceptable,” Etefa said.

Also raided were UNICEF offices, according to a U.N. official and a Houthi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief the media. The U.N. official said armed forces raided the offices and questioned employees in the parking lot.

Ammar Ammar, a spokesperson for UNICEF, said a number of the agency’s staffers were detained, and the agency was seeking additional information from the Houthis.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in a statement late Sunday said at least 11 personnel had been detained. He condemned the detentions and the “forced entry into the premises of the World Food Program, the seizure of U.N. property and attempts to enter other U.N. premises in Sanaa.”

He called for the immediate and unconditional release of the personnel.

The raids were the latest in a long-running Houthi crackdown against the United Nations and other international organizations working in rebel-held areas in Yemen.

They have detained dozens of U.N. staffers, as well as people associated with aid groups, civil society and the now-closed U.S. Embassy in Sanaa. The U.N. suspended its operations in the Houthi stronghold of Saada in northern Yemen after the rebels detained eight U.N. staffers in January.

Sunday’s raids came on the heels of the killing of the Houthi prime minister and several members of his Cabinet in an Israeli strike Thursday, in a blow to the Iran-backed rebels who have launched attacks on Israel and ships in the Red Sea in relation to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Among the dead were Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi, Foreign Minister Gamal Amer, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Local Development Mohammed al-Medani, Electricity Minister Ali Seif Hassan and Tourism Minister Ali al-Yafei, according to two Houthi officials and the victims’ families.

Also killed was a powerful deputy interior minister, Abdel-Majed al-Murtada, the Houthi officials said.

They were targeted during a “routine workshop held by the government to evaluate its activities and performance over the past year,” a Houthi statement said Saturday, two days after the strike.

Defense Minister Mohamed Nasser al-Attefi survived and Abdel-Karim al-Houthi, the interior minister and one of the most powerful figures in the rebel group, didn’t attend the Thursday meeting, the Houthi officials said.

U.N. envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg expressed “great concern” over Israel’s recent strikes in the Houthi-controlled areas after Houthi attacks against Israel.

“Yemen cannot afford to become a battleground for a broader geopolitical conflict,” he said in a statement. He called for de-escalation.

Thursday’s strike came after the Houthis attacked Israel on Aug. 21 with a ballistic missile that the Israeli military described as the first cluster bomb the rebels had launched at Israel since 2023.

The Houthis are likely to escalate their attacks on Israel and ships in the Red Sea after they vowed in July to target merchant ships belonging to any company that does business with Israeli ports, regardless of nationality.

Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the group’s secretive leader, said in a speech that was televised Sunday, “Our military approach of targeting the Israeli enemy, whether with missiles, drones or a naval blockade, is continuous, steady, and escalating.”

Magdy writes for the Associated Press.