Nearly 3,000 detainees to be released under latest prisoner swap deal reached during talks in Oman.<\/p>\n
Published On 23 Dec 202523 Dec 2025<\/p>\n
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Yemen\u2019s internationally recognised government and the Houthi group have reached an agreement to free detainees, according to the United Nations, with officials from both sides putting the number at thousands.<\/p>\n
In a statement on Tuesday, the UN envoy on Yemen Hans Grundberg said the prisoner swap deal came after nearly two weeks of talks in Muscat, the capital of Oman, a mediator in the conflict between the government and the Houthis that began in 2014.<\/p>\n
Calling it a \u201cpositive and meaningful step\u201d, Grundberg said the agreement will help to ease the suffering of detainees and their families across Yemen.<\/p>\n
He added that its \u201ceffective implementation will require the continued engagement and cooperation of the parties, coordinated regional support and sustained efforts to build on this progress toward further releases\u201d.<\/p>\n
Abdulqader al-Mortada, an official with the Houthi delegation in Muscat, said in a statement on X that \u201cwe signed an agreement today with the other party to implement a large-scale prisoner exchange deal involving 1,700 of our prisoners in exchange for 1,200 of theirs, including seven Saudis and 23 Sudanese\u201d.<\/p>\n
Majed Fadhail, a member of the government delegation, said the new exchange would see \u201cthousands\u201d of war prisoners released, according to the AFP news agency.<\/p>\n
Two of the seven Saudi nationals are air force pilots, Fadhail told AFP.<\/p>\n
The war between the government and the Houthis, which has been largely frozen since 2022, has killed tens of thousands people and created one of the world\u2019s worst humanitarian disasters.<\/p>\n
According to the UN, nearly 20 million people across Yemen depend on aid to survive, while close to five million remain displaced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nearly 3,000 detainees to be released under latest prisoner swap deal reached during talks in Oman. Published On…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,8954,47,43,40,38,41,39,2893],"class_list":{"0":"post-199698","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-houthis","10":"tag-middle-east","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories","16":"tag-yemen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}