Houthi Ansarullah fighters
stand at attention as they parade during a tribal gathering in the
Yemeni capital, Sana’a, December 14, 2015. (AP)
Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah
movement has freed nine Saudi prisoners of war in exchange for 100
Yemenis as a “humanitarian” move, a year after Riyadh started its deadly
aggression against the impoverished nation. “A
first step of understanding and respect for the humanitarian aspect [of
the conflict] was the exchange of prisoners today,” Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam said in a statement on Saturday, adding the freed Saudi forces had been captured in some fronts in Yemen.
Earlier in the day, a US airstrike in the Yemen’s southern coastal Abyan province
reportedly killed 14 men suspected of belonging to al-Qaeda terrorist
group. The aerial raid destroyed a government intelligence headquarters
in the provincial capital Zinjibar, which had fallen in the hands of
terrorists.
The al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen
has taken advantage of the chaos and the breakdown of security to
tighten its grip on parts of southeast Yemen. Yemeni
people attend a rally marking first anniversary of Saudi Arabia’s war
of aggression against the country in the capital, Sana’a, on March 26,
2016. (AFP)On Saturday, thousands of Yemeni people gathered
at Saba’een Square of the capital Sana’a to denounce the Saudi military
campaign that has killed about 8,500 people, among them over 2,000
children, since March 26, 2015. The war on Yemen started in a bid
to bring the fugitive former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi,
who is a staunch ally of Riyadh, back to power and undermine the Houthi
Ansarullah movement.
