SANAA, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. oil engineer who was held by Yemen's dominant Houthi group last year was released on Thursday and sent to Oman, a senior Houthi official told Xinhua.
An Omani flight carried the engineer, along with a Houthi negotiator, to meet UN officials in the Gulf country, the official said on condition of anonymity.
On Sep. 25, Danny Lavone Burch, 63, was abducted in the Houthis-held capital Sanaa, according to the Houthi-controlled interior ministry.
"Burch was accompanied by Ansarullah (Houthi) spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam to Muscat," the Houthi official said.
"Abdulsalam was invited by the Omani government to meet UN officials to prepare a new round of UN-sponsored peace talks with Saudi-backed Yemeni rival parties," he said without giving further details.
Previous peace negotiations failed to terminate the nearly three-year-old Yemeni conflict.
In March 2015, the Saudi-led coalition launched a military campaign against Iranian-allied Houthis in support of internationally-recognized President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The war has killed more than 10,000 Yemenis, mostly civilians, and displaced three million others.
