Al-Mukalla: Yemen’s national airline will recommence direct flights from Houthi-controlled Sanaa to Saudi Arabia on Saturday after a break of eight years to help Yemeni pilgrims travel to the Kingdom.
The flights will link Sanaa with Jeddah and Madinah, Yemenia Airways said.
Yemen’s Information Minister Moammar Al-Iryani said on Twitter on Thursday that the government, in cooperation with Saudi authorities, had restarted the flights to alleviate the suffering of Yemenis wishing to visit holy sites.
President Rashad Mohammad Al-Alimi was “making ceaseless efforts at multiple levels to alleviate the suffering of Yemeni citizens despite the difficult situation and the terrorist Houthi militia’s actions against Yemenis and harassment of them,” he said.
The Yemeni government said that 30,000 pilgrims had already entered Saudi Arabia, mostly through the Wadea border, with about 2,600 traveling by plane.
Yemenia said earlier it would double the number of its flights between Sanaa and Amman to six per week. The UN’s special envoy to Yemen, Hans Grundberg, applauded the decision and urged all parties to do more to facilitate the movement of Yemenis out of and within the country.
In exchange for the Houthis lifting their siege of Taiz and halting fighting on battlefields, the Yemeni government agreed to allow Yemenia to operate commercial flights from Sanaa and more fuel ships to enter Hodeidah port under a UN-brokered truce that went into force in April last year.
Despite drastically curtailing their military action, primarily outside Marib, the Houthis refused to lift their siege of Taiz or stop drone and missile attacks on oil facilities in government-controlled areas.
Meanwhile, the head of the Yemeni government’s delegation in the prisoner exchange discussions, Yahya Kazman, said on Wednesday that a new round of UN-sponsored consultations with the Houthis regarding forcibly disappeared people and detainees would start in the Jordanian capital Amman on Friday.
“In coordination with the Office of the UN Envoy, we will begin a round of consultations, not negotiations, in the Jordanian capital of Amman on Friday, June 16, to determine the fate of all the disappeared people, mainly the politician Mohammed Qahtan, as well as the remaining detainees and people who were forcibly disappeared by the Houthi militia,” Kazman said on Twitter.
By agreeing to the Amman meetings, the Yemeni government appears to have reneged on an earlier resolve to boycott talks with the Houthis until the militia disclosed Qahtan’s location and allowed his family to visit him.
The first round of prisoner swap negotiations in March resulted in the release of about 900 detainees. It was the second major exchange since the start of the war and boosted hopes for the release of thousands more prisoners.
On the ground, Yemen’s army said on Thursday that it had shot down two explosive-laden drones fired by the Houthis over army-controlled areas in the central province of Marib over the past 48 hours. It accused the militia of intensifying its drone and ground attacks in Marib and Taiz.
