Wounded Houthi militants to be evacuated from famine stricken Yemen

A UN plane will evacuate 50 wounded Houthi militants from Yemen’s rebel-held capital Sana’a on Monday as a “confidence building measure” ahead of planned peace talks in Sweden, a Saudi-led military coalition said.

The Telegraph reports “A UN chartered plane will arrive at Sana’a international airport Monday to evacuate 50 wounded combatants… three Yemeni doctors and a UN doctor, from Sana’a to Muscat,” a coalition spokesman said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.

Al Jazeera reports “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 rebels had been a stumbling block to the start of a previous round of aborted peace talks in September.”

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 rebels or the UN.

The proposed UN-brokered peace talks have been backed by both the rebels 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”.