Europe News Desk !! Yemen’s Houthi rebels have signed a new prisoner exchange agreement with the country’s government, raising hopes of a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict in the country. The move comes hours after the Iran-backed Houthis and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government successfully completed a prisoner exchange in which 887 prisoners and detainees from both sides were released. An upcoming deal will see the release of 700 prisoners in exchange for 700 prisoners from the opposition side, Abdul-Kader al-Motarda, head of the Houthi Committee for Prisoners Affairs, said during a press conference held in the Houthi-controlled Yemeni capital of Sanaa on Sunday. Will be involved. The Houthi official did not provide details on the timing of the exchange and the signing of the agreement with the Yemeni government, Xinhua news agency reported.
So far, both the Yemeni government and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which was responsible for transporting the detainees as agreed in the recently concluded swap deal, have not commented on the Houthi announcement. Yemeni government forces and Houthi rebels successfully completed a three-day prisoner exchange earlier in the day, in a significant step toward resolving Yemen’s long-running conflict. Yahya Kazman, head of the internationally recognized Yemeni government’s negotiating committee, said the third and final batch of swaps concluded successfully on Sunday with the arrival of three Red Cross flights at Sanaa’s airport and Tadween’s airport in Marib, central Yemen. Happened. Over the past three days, the ICRC and the UN have facilitated the transport of hundreds of prisoners between Yemeni territories and Saudi Arabia via flights.
Those released include Nasser Mansour Hadi, brother of former Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and the country’s former Defense Minister Mahmoud Al Subehi. The prisoner swap comes as part of ongoing efforts aimed at building confidence between Yemeni government forces and Houthi militias, who have been engaged in a brutal internal conflict since late 2014. It is widely regarded as an important step towards creating conditions conducive to and demonstrating the commitment of both sides to further negotiations with the aim of achieving a lasting peace. Local observers said the three-day prisoner exchange raised hopes of further deals that could potentially lead to the release of all detainees held by the two warring sides. Yemen has been embroiled in years of military conflict after Houthi militias seized control of several northern cities and ousted the Yemeni government from Sanaa in 2014. The ongoing conflict has caused a large number of casualties and plunged the Arab world’s poorest country into a humanitarian crisis, including widespread famine.
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