Yemen: Air raids ‘kill 31 civilians’; Saudi jet crashes
DUBAI: Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement accused the Saudi-led coalition of carrying out retaliatory air strikes on Saturday that killed at least 31 people including civilians, in the latest flare-up of a five-year war.
The United Nations office in Yemen said preliminary reports indicated that “as many as 31 civilians were killed and 12 others injured in strikes that hit Al-Hayjah area” in Al-Jawf province.
The health ministry in Houthicontrolled Al-Jawf province said women and children were among those killed, Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV reported.
It followed a Houthi claim to have downed a coalition Tornado warplane in the area on Friday.
But the Saudi-led coalition’s spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki said only that a Tornado jet had crashed in Al-Jawf, Saudi state news agency (SPA) reported on Saturday.
Maliki said the crew of two officers ejected from the plane before it crashed but the Houthis opened fire at them. The current status of the crew is unknown.
WARRING PARTIES TO EXCHANGE PRISONERS
Yemen’s warring sides have agreed to implement a long-delayed and major prisoner swap, the United Nations said on Sunday, in a sign that talks to end the disastrous war between the country’s internationally recognised government and its Houthi rebels could be making progress.
It would be the “first official large-scale” exchange of its kind since the beginning of the conflict, according to the UN.
The prisoner swap deal was seen as a breakthrough during 2018 peace talks in Sweden.
Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdel-Salam said they would release 1,400 prisoners including Saudis and Sudanese.