Thirty-eight Yemeni fishermen freed by Eritrea returned home on Wednesday, the final set of Yemeni detainees to be released from the East African country.
Yemeni authorities and fishing organization leaders said the 38 men returned after spending more than two months in an Eritrean prison.
A group of 54 Yemeni fishermen imprisoned in Eritrea for a year arrived in the Houthi-controlled city of Hodeidah on Sunday, days after another group of 29 fishermen returned from incarceration in the Horn of Africa. In total this month about 118 fishermen have been released by Eritrea.
“After the arrival of 38 fishermen to Yemen, Eritrea has freed all Yemeni fishermen,” a colleague from the Red Sea town of Mokha, who met the returning detainees, told Arab News.
He added his compatriots had arrived hungry, weak, and without money.
“They are malnourished and come home with only the clothes they are wearing. In Eritrea, they were forced to hard labor from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. They labored on roads and transported boulders from mountains without adequate food,” said the fisherman, who asked to remain anonymous.
Yemeni fishermen associations say that the ambassador to Eritrea and local merchants with operations in the country were engaged in negotiations that resulted in the release of all incarcerated fishermen in Eritrea.
Meanwhile, fighting broke out outside the central city of Marib between government troops and the Houthis, as the latter proceeded to assemble personnel and military equipment outside the city.
Yemen’s Armed Forces said in a statement on Wednesday that the Houthis assaulted positions in the Serwah area, west of Marib, sparking fighting with troops who managed to push back the Houthis.
This comes as Army leaders maintain the Houthis have continued to deploy military equipment and fighters around Marib in preparation for a military offensive.
Thousands of Yemeni combatants and civilians have been killed in the province since early 2021 when the Houthis started a offensive to conquer the government’s final stronghold in the north of the country, along with its oil and gas reserves.