The newest prisoner swap between the government forces and the rebel Houthi movement in Yemen is an important step toward peace, Interior Minister of Yemen Ibrahim Ali Ahmed Haidan told Al Arabia on Friday
DOHA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th April, 2023) The newest prisoner swap between the government forces and the rebel Houthi movement in Yemen is an important step toward peace, Interior Minister of Yemen Ibrahim Ali Ahmed Haidan told Al Arabia on Friday.
Earlier in the day, sources in the Sanaa and Aden airports told Sputnik that the first airplanes carrying prisoners of war departed from airports in the north and south of Yemen. Sources in Aden later informed Sputnik that the first group of 35 military personnel of the Yemeni government forces, including former Defense Minister Mahmoud Subaihi and the ex-president's brother, Nasser Mansour Hadi, arrived in southern Yemen from Sanaa, where the Houthi movement held them for more than eight years. The second exchange plane landed in Sanaa carrying 125 people.
"The largest-scale prisoner swap that stared today in Yemen is an important step towards peace-making," he said in an interview, adding that the exchanges of prisoners between the two warring sides will resume after the end of Ramadan and will go on until all prisoners on both sides are freed.
Yemeni Deputy Human Rights Minister Majid Fadaeel told Al Arabiya on Thursday that 249 Houthi prisoners would be swapped on the first day in exchange for Yemeni military officers.
The prisoner exchange deal was reached between the Yemeni government and the rebel Houthis movement during talks in Switzerland in March. According to Sputnik sources, the prisoner swap was initially set to start on April 11 and was planned to be concluded in three stages, with the release of over 880 prisoners expected.
Yemen has been engulfed in an armed conflict between the government forces and the Houthi rebels since 2014. The situation was exacerbated in March 2015, when the Saudi-led coalition, working in cooperation with the internationally-recognized Yemeni government, began conducting air, land and sea operations against the Houthis. The latter have retaliated by attacking Saudi forces and firing missiles into Saudi Arabia.
