Yemen

Yemen’s Houthi group did not launch an attack on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities in September, according to a confidential report by UN sanctions monitors seen by Reuters on Wednesday, bolstering a U.S. accusation that Iran was responsible.

A prominent Yemeni southern separatist group has declared its withdrawal from Saudi-brokered negotiations to shore up the military coalition against the country’s Houthi rebels.

Violence in Yemen will likely subside in 2020, amid signs the warring factions want to find a resolution to end the five-year war, a UN official has said.

The Yemeni government and southern separatists have failed to meet a deadline to establish a power-sharing government, an ominous sign for hopes of a wider deal to end years of war.

The Saudi-led coalition fighting Yemen’s Houthi rebels said Tuesday, November 26 that it will release 200 insurgents, as efforts pick up pace to end the conflict in the impoverished country. … Yemen’s warring parties agreed under a deal brokered in Sweden last December to exchange 15,000 prisoners, but the accord has not been fully implemented.

The momentum to reach a political settlement in Yemen “has been building”, the United Nations Special Envoy to the country told the Security Council on Friday, attributing the positive development to compromises on “a range of issues”.

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels hijacked a ship in the southern Red Sea, according to the state-run Saudi Press Agency. The move came as Yemen's internationally recognized government returned to the country for the first time since being forced out by the southern separatists last summer.

Saudi Arabia and Yemen's Iran-backed rebels are holding indirect, behind-the-scenes talks to end the devastating five-year war in Yemen, officials from both sides have told The Associated Press. The negotiations are taking place with Oman, a Gulf Arab country that borders both Yemen and Saudi Arabia, as mediator.

The top UN official in Yemen has welcomed an agreement to end infighting between the Government and separatist allies in the south of the country, known as the Southern Transitional Council, signed on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia. Special Envoy Martin Griffiths described the Riyadh Agreement as “an important step for our collective efforts to advance a peaceful settlement to the conflict in Yemen."

The United Arab Emirates has said it has completed the withdrawal of its troops from Yemen's southern port city of Aden as part of a deal brokered with Saudi Arabia to end a power struggle between southern separatists and the internationally backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.