SANAA, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. oil engineer has been kidnapped by an unknown armed group in the Yemeni capital of Sanaa, a security official said on Monday.
The 63-year-old engineer, Danny Lavone Burch, was abducted on Saturday from a busy street in downtown Sanaa and was seen taken under guns into a car heading for unknown location, said the source from the interior ministry.
Police have launched an investigation into the incident and conducted a search operation to locate the U.S. citizen, who worked with the Yemeni state-owned oil company Safer, said the official.
Burch, who married a Yemeni woman after converting to Islam and had three children, has been working with Safer since many years.
Sanaa is under tightened control of Shiite Houthi rebels since the group stormed the capital and seized control over it in Sept. 21, 2014.
Several citizens from western countries have been kidnapped or detained by Houthi group since then, but were later released unharmed and transferred to the neighboring Gulf state of Oman.
The United States has warned its citizens against staying or travelling to Yemen and also banned Yemenis from entering the United States.
The U.S. embassy in Sanaa has been closed along with all other foreign embassies since Houthi's takeover of Sanaa and expelled the internationally recognized Yemeni government into exile.
The country has since slid into a devastating war between Iran-allied Houthi fighters and the government forces backed by a Saudi-led military coalition, which seeks to roll back rebel gains and reinstate the government into Sanaa.
More than 10,000 have been killed in the war and 3 million displaced, according to UN aid agencies.
