Saudi-Led Coalition Releases 13 Houthi Prisoners, Movement Says

DOHA (Sputnik) - The Houthi rebels (Ansar Allah movement) in Yemen have announced the release of over a dozen prisoners, in exchange for one Saudi prisoner, the head of the Houthis' prisoner affairs committee, Abdul Qader al-Murtada, said.

"Today we met 13 prisoners at Sana'a International Airport who were released by the Saudi authorities in exchange for a Saudi prisoner we released earlier," Abdul Qader al-Murtada said on Twitter on Saturday.

On Friday, the head of the Houthis' prisoner affairs committee said on Twitter that the International Committee of the Red Cross had informed Ansar Allah that the start of the planned prisoner exchange with the Yemeni authorities was being put off for three days.

A prisoner exchange deal was reached between the Yemeni government and the Houthis in March, during talks in Switzerland. According to Sputnik sources, the prisoner swap between the Houthi rebels and the Yemeni government was initially set to start on April 11 and was planned to be concluded in three stages, with the expected release of over 880 prisoners.

Earlier this month, a Yemeni diplomatic source told Sputnik that the Houthis and the Yemeni government had reached an agreement to extend the truce for six months. The previous truce expired in October 2022, but the parties were not able to reach an agreement on its extension immediately afterward because of the Houthis’ demand that the government allocate to them part of the revenues from oil and gas sales from government-controlled territories.

Yemen has been engulfed in an armed conflict between the government forces and the Houthi rebels since 2014. The situation was exacerbated in March 2015, when the Saudi-led coalition, working in cooperation with the internationally-recognized Yemeni government, began conducting air, land and sea operations against the Houthis. The latter have retaliated by attacking Saudi forces and firing missiles into Saudi Arabia.