Yemeni Houthi fighters, Hadi loyalists start prisoner swap

Members of Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and militiamen loyal to fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi have started exchanging hundreds of prisoners taken during the conflict in the country.

“We have started the exchange in small groups. Due to the security situation, we had to divide the prisoners into groups of 20 each,” Mokhtar al-Rabbash, a member of the prisoners’ affairs committee aligned to the former regime, said.

Rabbash said the detainees were being transferred in buses.

The swap is expected to include 375 Ansarullah fighters as well as 285 pro-Hadi militiamen, and is taking place along the boundary between Yemen’s southwestern province of Lahij and the central province of Bayda.