A major prison break was staged on 30 June in central Yemen, setting free about 1,200 prisoners, some of who are believed to be Al-Qaeda militant fighters while others are convicted murderers.

This development sets a dangerous precedent to the warring militia’s strategies, and is a major blow to the country’s bid to control the ongoing civil war.

Yemen’s president Abd Rabbu Mansour al-Hadi is currently living in exile in Saudi Arabia; the Iran-backed Houthi fighters have taken control of large swathes of the country; forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh are also staging their bid to take control of the government; and the ongoing airstrikes being conducted by the Saudi Arabia-GCC coalition are believed to have left dozens of civilian casualties.

UN negotiator Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed has been in Riyadh this week, following a side trip to Kuwait, in a bid to come up with a preliminary peace deal to allow the warring parties to negotiate while a ceasefire is in force. However, this new development seems unlikely to encourage the various militia groups in Yemen to seek peaceful means to end the conflict.