The Saudi-led coalition fighting Shi’ite rebels in Yemen said Monday it released 109 Yemeni detainees in exchange for nine Saudis who were being held as the war moves toward winding down, according to reports.
With a deadline of April 10th for a cessation of hostilities and peace talks in Kuwait to follow, the Saudi-led war in Yemen has raged on for a year. Two rounds of talks last year failed to resolve the conflict.
On Saturday, tens of thousands of Yemenis “took to the streets of the capital Sanaa on Saturday to mark the first anniversary of the war between a coalition led by Saudi Arabia against Iran-allied fighters who had overthrown the government,” according to a report in Reuters.
Yemen’s former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, an ally of the Houthis, “made a rare appearance at the demonstration, his first since the war began, offering an olive branch to the Saudi-led coalition,” Reuters said.
“We hope that efforts to end the aggression will be successful, it is in the interest, and a demand, of our people” Abdel-Malek al-Houthi said in a televised speech, according to Reuters.
However, according to the United Nations and the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition campaigning in Yemen, the Houthis are the aggressors, illegally seizing control of huge swaths of Yemen away from the legitimate government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
Saudi Arabia has been successful in beating back the Houthi takeover of parts of Yemen, but it has yet to fully defeat the group in a year of fighting.
The fighting in some areas has led to a power vacuum allowing al Qaeda and Islamic State-linked fighters to take advantage.
At least 50 militants were killed in a U.S. air strike on an al Qaeda training camp in the mountains of southern Yemen on Tuesday. Another airstrike over the weekend, this time by the Saudi-led coalition targeted Al-Qaeda positions that killed five suspected militants, according to a Yemeni military official as reported in the AFP.
