Yemen’s warring parties agree largest prisoner swap

Yemen's warring parties have agreed to exchange around 1,000 prisoners, including 15 Saudis, as part of trust-building steps aimed at reviving a stalled peace process, the United Nations and sources said yesterday. The Yemeni government, backed by a Saudi-led military coalition, and the Houthi movement they have been battling for over five years, in late 2018 signed a deal to swap some 15,000 detainees split between both sides but the pact has been slowly and only partially implemented. The two sides will now free 1,081 detainees and prisoners, UN envoy Martin Griffiths said in a joint news briefing with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) after a nearly 10-day meeting of the prisoners' exchange committee held in the Swiss village of Glion above Lake Geneva. Heads of the two sides of the committee hugged at the end of their meeting, with Griffiths telling them: "Well done, well done."