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The internationally recognized Yemeni government and the Iran-backed Houthi Shiite rebels have agreed to an exchange of 2,900 prisoners, UN mediators and a Houthi official reported this Tuesday, after almost two weeks of talks in Oman.
The head of the Houthi prisoners' commission, Abdelqader Murtada, stated on his official X account that the agreement includes the release of 1,700 Houthi prisoners held by the Yemeni government in exchange for 1,200 detainees held by the insurgents, who control the capital, Sana'a, and other parts of the country.
The swap will include seven Saudi citizens and 23 Sudanese held by the Houthis, it said.
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These last prisoners would have been captured while fighting as part of the Saudi Arabian-led military coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015, in support of the government and against the Houthis. Right after, the United Nations mission in Yemen confirmed that the parties in the Yemen conflict concluded an 11-day meeting in Muscat, the capital of Oman, in which they agreed on a new phase of release of detainees related to the conflict. The conversations took place within the framework of the supervisory committee for the implementation of the detainees' release agreement, co-chaired by the office of the UN Special Envoy for Yemen and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The meeting marked the tenth session of the committee established under the 2018 Stockholm Agreement, which committed the conflicting parties to release all detainees related to the conflict. For his part, the UN Special Envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, celebrated the outcome and underlined the humanitarian importance of the progress in the release of detainees. He also thanked Oman - the main mediator between the Houthis and the Yemeni government - for hosting the talks and for its continued support for the UN's mediation efforts. "Reaching an agreement on another phase of the release of detainees related to the conflict is a positive and significant step that will hopefully alleviate the suffering of detainees and their families across Yemen," Grundberg said in a statement. Likewise, he added that an effective implementation will require the continuous cooperation of the parties, regional support, and sustained efforts to consolidate this progress. Prisoner swaps have been a recurring measure to foster trust in the war that has lasted a decade in Yemen, which has caused tens of thousands of deaths and plunged the country into one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
