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Yemen’s conflicting parties agree on exchange of 1,400 prisoners - Ansar Allah

United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths confirmed that the conflicting parties had reached such an agreement

© AP Photo/Hani Mohammed

MOSCOW, February 16. /TASS/. /TASS/. The parties to the Yemeni conflict have agreed to exchange 1,400 prisoners, Al Masirah news said on Sunday citing Mohamed Abdul-Salam, the chief negotiator of the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement at talks in Jordan.

According to Abdul-Salam, the United Nations-brokered talks with the Yemeni government delegation in the Jordanian capital city have yielded an agreement on the exchange of 1,400 prisoners within the Stockholm settlement process.

"Citizens od Sudan and Saudi Arabia" will be among those to be released under the agreement, he noted.

United Nations Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths confirmed that the conflicting parties had reached such an agreement. He said the prisoner exchange would be carried out in several stages, but did not specify how many. Neither did he say when the exchange process was supposed to be over. Griffiths called on the Yemeni government and the leaders of Ansar Allah to abide by the agreements reached in Jordan.

Armed confrontation between government forces and Ansar Allah (Houthi) rebels, who currently control the capital city Sana, has been going on in Yemen since August 2014, reaching the most active phase in March 2015 after the Saudi-led coalition invaded the country.

The intra-Yemeni consultations in Stockholm in early December 2018 yielded a number of agreements on a ceasefire and gradual withdrawal of armed units from Yemen’s largest Red Sea port of Hodeidah, as well as from the ports of Salif and Ras Isa. The parties also agreed to begin negotiation on prisoner exchange.

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