UN jet 'to evacuate' 50 wounded Houthi fighters to Oman

A Saudi-UAE coalition fighting Yemen's Houthi movement says 50 wounded fighters will be evacuated for treatment to Oman's Muscat in a plane belonging to the United Nations.

کد خبر: ۸۵۶۸۲۵

تاریخ: ۱۲ آذر ۱۳۹۷ - ۰۸:۳۲

The announcement on Monday came after Martin Griffiths, the UN envoy to Yemen, requested this arrangement as a goodwill gesture ahead of planned peace talks in Sweden.

The evacuation marks a key step forward in kickstarting stalled negotiations as world powers press for an end to the devastating four-year war that has pushed Yemen, the world's worst humanitarian disaster, to the brink of famine.

The fate of wounded fighters had been a stumbling block to the start of a previous round of aborted peace talks in September.

WATCH00:00

Do the Houthis have a plan for peace in Yemen?

"A UN chartered plane will arrive at Sanaa international airport Monday to evacuate 50 wounded combatants accompanied by ... three Yemeni doctors and a UN doctor, from Sanaa to Muscat," coalition spokesperson Turki al-Maliki said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

The United-States backed military alliance agreed to facilitate the medical evacuations at the request of Griffiths for "humanitarian reasons" and as a "confidence building" measure, Maliki added in the statement.

There was no immediate reaction from the Houthi fighters or the UN.

The proposed UN-brokered peace talks have been backed by both the fighters and the Saudi-led government and were expected to take place in Sweden this week.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, however, has played down the early December schedule and said he hoped talks would start "this year".

Houthi fighters have said they will attend the talks if they are guaranteed safe passage.

Previous talks planned for September in Geneva failed to get under way as the Houthi delegation never left Yemen's fighter-held capital Sanaa, arguing that the UN could not guarantee their safe return.

They also accused the world body of failing to secure the evacuation of wounded fighters to Oman.

Previous talks broke down in 2016, when 108 days of negotiations in Kuwait failed to yield a deal and left fighter delegates stranded in Oman for three months.

In recent days, Griffiths has held talks separately with officials from both warring parties as part of efforts to lay the ground work for talks in Sweden.

UN aid chief Mark Lowcock warned last week that Yemen was "on the brink of a major catastrophe", following a trip to the country.

His comments came after renewed deadly clashes between Houthi fighters and pro-government forces in the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, which is vital for the flow of humanitarian aid.

Yemen has been torn apart by conflict since 2014, when the Houthis, allied with troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, captured large expanses of the country, including Sanaa.

Saudi Arabia launched a massive aerial campaign against the fighters in March 2015, aimed at restoring the government of exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

More 14 million civilians in Yemen now face starvation, while over three-quarters of the population - some 22 million people - need humanitarian assistance. Aid groups estimate 85,000 children may have died of hunger and cholera while tens of thousands of civilians are believed to have been killed, largely by Saudi-led bombings.