Yemen prisoner swap to start on April 13, last three days

A prisoner exchange involving hundreds of detainees from Yemen’s brutal civil war will start on Thursday, a Yemeni government official said, against a backdrop of rising hopes for peace.

Nearly 900 prisoners, most of whom were fighting with the Iran-backed Houthi militia, will be flown between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, the official said on Tuesday.

The Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country has been at war since March 2015, months after the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, through direct and indirect causes, and Yemen is suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations.

The prisoner exchange, the biggest since October 2020, will last three days.