Yemen's warring parties exchanged 320 prisoners on Friday in the first such swap since Sanaa rebels and authorities in Aden agreed in March to free nearly 900 people, sources familiar with the matter told Sputnik
CAIRO/DOHA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th April, 2023) Yemen's warring parties exchanged 320 prisoners on Friday in the first such swap since Sanaa rebels and authorities in Aden agreed in March to free nearly 900 people, sources familiar with the matter told Sputnik.
Sources at the airports in the northern Yemeni capital of Sanaa and in the southern port city of Aden, the seat of the internationally recognized Yemeni government, said Houthi rebels released 69 pro-government troops in return for 250 of their own.
Among those released are former Defense Minister Mahmoud al-Subaihi and Nasser Mansour Hadi, brother of ex-Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who spent eight years in Houthi captivity.
Earlier in the day, sources in Sanaa and Aden told Sputnik that the first planes carrying prisoners of war departed from airports in the north and south of Yemen. Sources in Aden later said that the first group of 35 military personnel of the Yemeni government forces, including Subaihi and 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.
Under the UN-brokered deal, Houthis and the UN-backed Yemeni government will exchange 887 prisoners of war over the course of three days, flying them across the divided Yemen and to Saudi Arabia. Sixteen Saudis and three Sudanese soldiers will also be freed.
A bloody civil war broke out in Yemen in late 2013. Houthi rebels overran the capital in 2014, forcing the government to retreat south where a parallel administration was set up with the backing of Saudi Arabia. The war has exacted a heavy civilian toll and unleashed a humanitarian disaster on the impoverished Arab nation.
