Over 1 000 prisoners freed in swop deal
PLANES carrying prisoners exchanged by the warring parties in Yemen took off from three airports yesterday in an operation to return about 1 000 men home and help build the trust to enable fresh talks to end a devastating war.
The Saudi-led military coalition and Yemen’s Houthi movement agreed last month in Switzerland to exchange 1 081 prisoners, including 15 Saudis, in the largest swop of its kind in the five-year-old conflict.
In an operation managed by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), two airplanes carrying members of the coalition freed from detention took off from the airport in the Houthi-held capital, Sana’a, a witness said.
One of the planes was carrying Saudi and Sudanese detainees and flew to Saudi Arabia. The other plane flew to Sayoun airport in government-held Hadramout region. A plane carrying Houthis released from captivity by the coalition departed Sayoun, and a second arrived from Abha airport in Saudi Arabia, sources said.
The ICRC later said in Twitter posts that 484 prisoners had been exchanged. More flights are scheduled over the next two days, it added.
Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam said the swop “brings hope for peace-building”.
The warring sides had agreed at peace talks in 2018 to swop some 15 000 detainees split between both sides as part of trust-building measures to pave the way for political negotiations to end the conflict.
UN Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths said he hoped the parties would soon reconvene under UN auspices to discuss the release of all war-related prisoners and detainees.
Yemen has been mired in conflict since the Houthis ousted the internationally recognised government from power in Sana’a in late 2014, prompting the Western-backed coalition to intervene in March 2015.
The war has killed more than 100 000 people and spawned what the UN says is the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.