UNICEF official is released in Yemen and returns home to Jordan, officials say

CAIRO (AP) — The deputy director of the UNICEF office in Yemen was released from detention by Houthi rebels in the Yemeni capital city and returned home Thursday to Jordan, the Jordanian foreign ministry said.

The freeing of Jordanian citizen Lana Shukri Kataw was announced at a time of high tensions in Yemen and the larger region. Israeli strikes on Yemen on Wednesday killed at least 35 people and wounded more than 130 others.

Kataw was one of at least 19 U.N. staffers who were detained on Aug. 31 when the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel group raided their offices in the capital city of Sanaa.

The Houthis have not given a reason for taking the U.N. staffers hostage. But the raids were the latest in a long-running Houthi crackdown on the U.N. and other international organizations as well as diplomats working in rebel-held areas.

In 2024, they detained at least 11 U.N. employees and days later said they had arrested suspected members of an espionage network. The United Nations has denied those allegations.

The raids on offices of the United Nations’ food, health and children’s agencies in Sanaa followed Israel’s killing of Houthi Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi and several Cabinet ministers in an airstrike the week before.

It was not immediately clear exactly when Kataw was released, but the Jordanian foreign ministry said in a statement she was held in detention for days and that she arrived at a military airport in Jordan on Thursday.

It was unclear whether other staffers also had been freed.

Israel carried out airstrikes on Yemen on Wednesday and rescue efforts continued on Thursday.

The victims in Wednesday’s Israeli airstrikes in Yemen included at least two local journalists, Abduallah al-Bahri and Abbas al-Delmi, who were killed in the strikes in central Sanaa, the families told The Associated Press on Thursday.

They worked for news outlets called 26 September and Sabaa news agency.

Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, in his weekly address, accused Israel of targeting media institutions and civilian infrastructure, but said the strikes would not deter his group.

“Israel is a criminal enemy that targets media institutions in Sanaa in places crowded with civilians ... because it seeks to target everyone,” he said.

The airstrikes also caused damaged to Yemen's national museum and other historical sites in the capital, the Houthi culture ministry said Thursday.

The status of the artifacts inside the museum is still unclear, but thousands of historical artifacts are at risk of damage, according to the ministry. AP photos and video footage from the site of Wednesday's strike showed damage to the building’s facade.

The ministry called on the United Nations cultural agency UNESCO to condemn the attack and to intervene to help protect the historical building and its artifacts.

Most of those killed were in Sanaa, the capital, where a military headquarters and a fuel station were hit on Wednesday, the Houthi-run health ministry said.

Israel has previously launched waves of airstrikes in response to the Houthis’ firing of missiles and drones at Israel. The Iran-backed Houthis say they are supporting Hamas and the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and on Sunday they sent a drone that breached Israel’s multilayered air defenses and slammed into a southern airport.

Separately, the Israeli military said Thursday it carried out strikes in Lebanon targeting what it described as a Hezbollah “site used for the production and storage of strategic weapons” in the Bekaa valley and infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah in the area of Zrariyeh in the south.

Earlier, Lebanon’s health ministry said one person was killed in an Israeli drone strike targeting a motorcyclist near the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon. Lebanese officials also said Israeli forces entered the border village of Aita al-Shaab and carried out a controlled demolition of a building that had previously been a school for special needs students.

Since a U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted the latest Israel-Hezbollah war in November, Israel has continued to carry out near-daily strikes in Lebanon that it says are aimed at stopping the militant group from rebuilding its capabilities.

Lebanese officials say the strikes are in violation of the ceasefire.

A man inspects the damage outside the National Museum, following the Israeli airstrikes on Wednesday in Sanaa, Yemen, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)

Smoke billows following Israeli airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (AP Photo)

People inspect the damage at the National Museum, following the Israeli airstrikes on Wednesday in Sanaa, Yemen, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)

Flames and smoke rise following Israeli airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (AP Photo)

A man inspects the damage at the National Museum, following the Israeli airstrikes on Wednesday in Sanaa, Yemen, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)

NEW YORK (AP) — The first witness at the sex trafficking trial of three brothers, two of them high-end real estate brokers, testified Tuesday that the thrill of attending a party at actor Zac Efron’s apartment turned into a nightmare when, hours later, one of the brothers repeatedly raped her at their home and taunted her about it.

The woman, who testified under a pseudonym, is one of several alleged victims expected to testify against brothers Tal, Oren and Alon Alexander, who are accused of teaming up to drug and rape women and girls over several years.

Lawyers for the brothers say the sex was consensual.

Prosecutors say the Alexander brothers used their ties to the wealthy and famous to lure multiple victims.

The woman said she was 20, an anthropology major in college, when she met two of the brothers at the party at Efron's New York apartment. She accompanied a friend who had recently met Tal Alexander, and who invited her there to watch the last game of the 2012 NBA Finals. She said she had little interaction with Efron, who is not accused of any wrongdoing.

After the game, the woman went to an afterparty at a Manhattan nightclub, where she said she was given a drink and remembered little afterward until she woke up naked on a bed in another apartment with Alon Alexander, also naked, standing over her. She said she repeatedly tried to get up, but he kept pushing her back, prompting her to say: “I don’t want to have sex with you.”

“Haha, you already did,” she recalled him saying as he “laughed in my face.”

She said he then overpowered and raped her. While it was happening, Tal Alexander walked into the room briefly, but did nothing to stop the attack, the woman told the jury. He seemed “super nonchalant," she said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Madison Smyser said in her opening statement to the jury that the Alexander brothers “masqueraded as party boys when really they were predators." Smyser said they used “whatever means necessary” including luxury accommodations, flights, drugs, alcohol and sometimes brute force to lure women into situations where they could be raped.

Attorney Teny Geragos, representing Oren Alexander, urged the jury to reject prosecutors' “monstrous story.”

She said the brothers, who got out of college in 2008, were successful, ambitious and sometimes arrogant as they pursued women in nightclubs, bars, restaurants and online in what is known as “hookup culture,” hoping to have as much sex as possible.

“You may find this behavior immoral, but it is not criminal,” Geragos said. She said some of the brothers' accusers were hoping to enrich themselves with lawsuits and spoke of themselves as victims only after feeling regret that they had done illegal drugs or had sex outside of relationships with their boyfriends.

Attorney Deanna Paul, representing Tal Alexander, warned jurors that the subject matter of the case was disturbing and will seem like an R-rated movie, especially after prosecutors portrayed the brothers as “monsters.”

“In their early 20s, Tal and his brothers were party boys. They were womanizers. They slept with many, many women,” she said.

She urged jurors to reject the criminal charges against the brothers if they conclude that the accusers' testimony was unreliable.

Oren and Tal Alexander were real estate dealers who specialized in high-end properties in Miami, New York and Los Angeles. Their brother, Alon, graduated from New York Law School before running the family’s private security firm. Tal is 39 years old while Alon and Oren, who are twins, are 38.

An indictment alleges that the men conspired to entice women to join them at vacation destinations such as New York's Hamptons by providing flights and luxury hotel rooms.

The brothers have been held without bail since their December 2024 arrest in Miami, where they lived.

During her testimony Tuesday, the trial's first witness said she fled the room where Alon Alexander had attacked her after he fell asleep. The woman remained composed through much of her testimony, though she got choked up several times. She cried as she recalled reaching out several years after the attack to friends she had told about the experience so she could be reminded that others loved her.

In this courtroom sketch, assistant U.S. Attorney Madison Smyser gestures to Alon Alexander, Oren Alexander and Tal Alexander as she presents her opening statement with Judge Valerie Caproni presiding on the bench in Manhattan federal court on the first day of the Alexander brothers' sex trafficking trial, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)

In this courtroom sketch, assistant U.S. Attorney Madison Smyser questions a witness going by the pseudonym "Katie Moore" regarding the alleged sexual assault by Alon Alexander, seated far left, as Judge Valerie Caproni presides on the bench in Manhattan federal court, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)

In this courtroom sketch, from left, Alon Alexander, Oren Alexander and Tal Alexander appear in Manhattan federal court on the first day of their sex trafficking trial, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)

In this courtroom sketch, a witness, testifying under the pseudonym "Katie Moore," cries on the witness stand in Manhattan federal court on the first day of the sex trafficking trial of Alon Alexander, Oren Alexander and Tal Alexander, Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2026, in New York. (Elizabeth Williams via AP)

FILE - Oren and Tal Alexander speak at a panel at the Rockstars of Real Estate Event, Sept. 3, 2013 in New York. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Invision for DETAILS Magazine/AP Images, File)