DUBAI -- A father burned his 15-year-old daughter to death for keeping in touch with her fiance, police in Yemen said.
"The father committed this heinous crime on the pretext that his daughter had been keeping contacts with her fiance," according to a statement posted on a police website Tuesday. It added that the 35-year-old man had been arrested in a remote village in the central Taiz province.
Local news websites reported that the father had caught the girl chatting on the phone with her betrothed.
Her death sparked further outrage in the country where an eight-year girl died from internal bleeding on her wedding night last month. Authorities said they would prosecute those responsible.
Traditional tribal customs in parts of Yemen prohibit contacts between men and women before marriage. Poverty and concern about "family honor" prompts many Yemenis to marry off their daughters young, often below the age of 18, a practice that has been criticized by groups like Human Rights Watch.
