RIYADH — The Saudi-led military coalition fighting
Yemen's Houthi insurgents said Friday it had freed a batch of rebel prisoners,
part of what it describes as efforts to end the seven-year war.
اضافة اعلان
Last week, the coalition said it would release 163 prisoners
it accused of participating in "hostilities" against Saudi Arabia.
The official Saudi Press Agency said on Twitter early Friday
evening that all 163 had been flown to Yemen.
Earlier in the day it had said the process would involve
"three stages of air transport of prisoners" to Yemen's
Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa and the southern port city of Aden.
A spokesman for the
International Committee of the Red Cross(ICRC) told AFP the organization was "facilitating the transfer of more
than 100 Yemeni former detainees from Saudi Arabia to Yemen".
The spokesman, Basheer Omar, said there would be three ICRC
flights from the Saudi city of Abha to Aden.
An ICRC statement said 117 Yemeni prisoners were repatriated
Friday, while others were released in an earlier operation in which the ICRC
did not participate.
"We are pleased to see that humanitarian considerations
are being prioritized for the sake of the families, who are waiting for their
loved ones to return home," said Katharina Ritz, head of the ICRC
delegation in Yemen.
"It is important to alleviate the suffering of the many
Yemenis who continue to suffer from more than seven years of conflict. This
includes detainees and their families."
Saudi state media footage purported to show released
prisoners, in white robes and holding white roses, aboard an ICRC aircraft and
then disembarking in Aden. Their identities could not be independently
verified.
Senior rebel official Mohammed Ali Al-Houthi said on Twitter
that there would be "clarification" later "concerning the 163
prisoners" who were released, and called on Saudi Arabia to free
"all" Yemeni prisoners.
Shaky truce
The conflict pits Yemen's Saudi-backed government,
officially based in
Aden, against the Iran-aligned Houthis.
It has killed hundreds of thousands of people directly or
indirectly, and pushed the Arab world's poorest country to the brink of famine.
It has also seen Houthi strikes on neighboring Saudi Arabia
and on the UAE, another member of the coalition.
But a renewable two-month truce that went into effect in
early April has provided a rare respite from violence in much of the country,
and has seen oil tankers begin arriving at the rebel-held port of Hodeida,
potentially easing fuel shortages in
Sanaa and elsewhere.
The truce also involved a deal to resume commercial flights
out of Sanaa's airport for the first time in six years and to open main roads
leading into the besieged government-held city of Taez — though neither step
has been taken so far.
In late March, just before the truce took effect, the
Houthis said they had agreed to a prisoner swap that would see 1,400 rebels
freed in exchange for 823 pro-government fighters — including 16 Saudis and
three Sudanese.
The last such swap was in October 2020, when 1,056 prisoners
were released on each side, according to the Red Cross.
Houthi media reported on April 23 that the rebels had
released 42 prisoners.
The Houthis took over Sanaa in 2014, prompting the Saudi-led
military intervention the following year and igniting a war that has caused
what the UN terms the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
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