ANSD : Houthis release Saudi prisoner in Yemen

SUN 24 - 11 - 2024

Date: Jan 30, 2019
Source: The Daily Star

Houthis release Saudi prisoner in Yemen

_Reuters
DUBAI: Yemen’s Houthi group said Tuesday that it has released a Saudi prisoner, according its TV channel, Al-Masirah. He had been released on humanitarian grounds due to illness and was repatriated by Red Cross plane, Al-Masirah said, citing Abdel-Qadir Murtada, a Houthi official.

The United Nations special envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths welcomed the release on Twitter, saying he hoped to see “more similar humanitarian gestures from the parties,” and looked forward to implementation of a prisoner exchange agreement.

Yemen’s warring parties are yet to agree full terms of a prisoner swap, one of the least contentious confidence-building measures U.N.-sponsored peace talks held in December’s in Sweden amid Western pressure to end the conflict.

The United Nations is pushing for the exchange and a peace deal in the main port city of Hodeida to pave the way for a second round of discussions to end a nearly four-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands of people.

Griffiths briefly visited Hodeida Tuesday in his first trip there since the warring parties reached a cease-fire over the port city in Sweden.

He was in the Red Sea port city “for a few hours” to oversee the truce deal’s implementation and “follow up on preparations” for a new monitoring mission, a U.N. official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The deal stipulates a full cease-fire, followed by the withdrawal of rival forces from the city - two clauses that have yet to be fulfilled.

But since the cease-fire agreement came into force on Dec. 18, a precarious calm has returned to the city, despite each side accusing the other of violations.

Griffiths said Monday the deal’s timeline had also been extended.

“That momentum is still there, even if we have seen the timelines for implementation extended, both in Hodeida and with regard to the prisoner exchange agreement,” he told Saudi-owned Arabic newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat.

Separately, a bomb attack in a market killed seven Yemeni civilians including a photographer for a UAE television channel in the government-controlled town of Mokha, medics and military sources said Tuesday.

At least 20 people were wounded in the overnight blast in the Red Sea town, where pro-government forces backed by the Arab coalition battling the Houthi rebels are based.

The improvised explosive device was planted on a motorcycle parked in the middle of the market, an official in the pro-government forces said.

A photographer for Abu Dhabi TV, Ziad al-Sharabi, was among the dead, the official Saba news agency quoted Information Minister Moammer al-Eryani as saying.

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