French officials confirmed on Wednesday that the country will send a new shipment of weapons to Saudi Arabia, among claims that the arms are used in the Yemen War.
Saudi Arabia's state arms producer and a French government-majority firm signed an agreement Sunday on a joint venture to boost the kingdom's navy, amid calls to halt weapons sales to Riyadh over it role in Yemen.
The father of a French woman taken hostage in Yemen on Tuesday called on her kidnappers "to show their humanity" and set her free along with the Yemeni woman taken at the same time.
UPDATED: A French woman working for an international organization in the Yemeni capital Sanaa was kidnapped on Tuesday morning, the Foreign Ministry said. It comes after France had urged its nationals to leave the country earlier this month.
A Frenchman was killed Monday and another was wounded when gunmen fired on their car in a diplomatic district in Sanaa. The victim was reported to ba guard at the French embassy.
A Yemeni airline plane seized at a Paris airport in a dispute over an unpaid fine was allowed to fly out after a deal was struck with the US leasing firm that owns it, airport sources said Saturday.
French President Francois Hollande said Saturday that France would close its embassy in Yemen over security fears for "several days", after Germany and Britain took the same precaution.
<p>Six Somali men accused of taking a French couple hostage on their yacht went on trial in Paris on Tuesday in France's first prosecution of alleged Somali pirates.</p>
<p>Al-Qaeda militants have freed three French aid workers they kidnapped in Yemen more than five months ago, the French presidency and local officials said on Monday.</p>
<p>Pirates who attacked a yacht in the Gulf of Aden killed its French skipper before abandoning it, a source close to the family said on Sunday, the day after the dead man's wife was found unharmed. </p>
<p>A German warship has found a French catamaran adrift in pirate-infested waters in the Gulf of Aden off Yemen with no crew aboard. Their fate is unknown, France said on Friday.</p>
<p>Three French aid workers who were kidnapped in southeastern Yemen are held by Al-Qaeda members who are seeking a $12 million ransom for their release, tribal sources said on Wednesday.</p>
<p>Yemeni security forces were searching on Monday for three French aid workers missing in the southeastern province of Hadramawt, a provincial official told AFP without confirming they had been kidnapped.</p>
