Majed Fadhail, a member of the government delegation for the prisoner swap talks, stated they had agreed with the Houthis on a new exchange that would see “thousands” of war prisoners released.
Abdulqader al-Mortada, an official with the Houthi delegation, announced in a statement on X that “we signed an agreement today with the other party to implement a large-scale prisoner exchange deal involving 1,700 of our prisoners in exchange for 1,200 of theirs, including seven Saudis and 23 Sudanese”.
In a statement on Tuesday, the UN envoy on Yemen Hans Grundberg said the prisoner swap deal came after nearly two weeks of talks in Muscat, the capital of Oman, a mediator in the conflict between the government and the Houthis that began in 2014.
He added that its “effective implementation will require the continued engagement and cooperation of the parties, coordinated regional support and sustained efforts to build on this progress toward further releases”.
The war in Yemen has been largely frozen since 2022, but tensions have risen in recent weeks as the separatist Southern Transitional Council made military advances in the country’s eastern governorates of Hadramout and al-Mahra.
Overall, the conflict has killed tens of thousands people and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. According to the UN, nearly 20 million people across Yemen depend on aid to survive, while close to five million remain displaced.
