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As many as 18 international aid workers, including 11 Yemeni employees of the United Nations, were taken into custody in a series of raids late Thursday, according to Yemen government officials and an aid group.
In a report on its website, the Mayyun Organization for Human Rights, citing its own sources, reported armed Houthi security and intelligence officers carried out simultaneous armed raids in the Yemen capital, Sanaa, as well as the cities of Hodeida, Saada and Amran.
The group said the raids targeted Yemeni employees working for the United Nations and other international aid organizations. The armed officers raided their homes, interrogated them and confiscated mobile phones and computers before taking them away in military vehicles.
The group said the detained workers included Yemen employees of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the U.N. Development Program, the World Food Program and the office of the Secretary-General's Special Envoy to Yemen.
Workers also were detained from the aid groups Save the Children, the Yemeni civil society organization Relief and Development Response, Oxfam, CARE America and the Yemeni governmental institution, the Social Fund for Development.
Government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the group's report to news organizations.
During a briefing Friday at U.N. headquarters in New York, spokesperson Stephane Dujarric confirmed the number of U.N. personnel working in Yemen who were taken and said the U.N. was seeking clarification from de facto Houthi authorities about circumstances of the detentions.
"I can further tell you that we are pursuing all available channels to secure the safe and unconditional release of all of them, as rapidly as possible," he said.
The advocacy group Human Rights Watch also issued a statement calling on the Houthis to "immediately release any U.N. employees and workers for other independent groups they have detained because of their human rights and humanitarian work and stop arbitrarily detaining and forcibly disappearing people."
The Mayyun organization condemned "in the strongest terms" the raids and detentions, calling the actions a "dangerous escalation" that violates the privileges and immunities aid workers are granted under international law.
The group demanded the Houthis reveal the fate of the abductees and called for their immediate release.
Yemen's Houthi rebels and their affiliated media organizations did not immediately acknowledge the detentions.
The Iranian-supported Houthis have attacked shipping in the Red Sea, drawing air strikes from the United States and Britain, and they have held about 20 Yemeni employees of the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa for the past three years.
Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
The Voice of America provides news and information in more than 40 languages to an estimated weekly audience of over 326 million people. Stories with the VOA News byline are the work of multiple VOA journalists and may contain information from wire service reports.