Cease-fire begins in Yemeni port

SANAA, YEMEN — A ceasefire went into force early Tuesday in Yemen’s Red Sea port of Hodeida after intense fighting between government-allied forces and Shiite rebels erupted shortly before the U.N.brokered truce took hold in the contested city, Yemeni officials said.

They said artillery shelling and heavy machine gun fire shook districts in the south and east of the strategic city late Monday in the final hour before the ceasefire took effect at midnight.

The fighting took place as the two sides were declaring their intention to observe the cease-fire agreed to last week during U.N. sponsored talks in Sweden between the internationally recognized government and the rebels known as Houthis.

Fighting subsided as the cease-fire took effect, with only the sporadic sound of machine guns heard in the city, which handles about 70 percent of Yemen’s imports.

Under the agreement, a joint committee led by U.N. officers will oversee the cease-fire and the redeployment of the warring parties’ forces out of Hodeida, which is currently controlled by the Houthis. Local authorities and police will run the city and its three ports under U.N. supervision, and the two sides are barred from bringing in reinforcements.

A cessation of hostilities in Hodeida would spare Yemen a significant spike in civilian casualties since the rebels have shown battlefield resilience as much larger government-allied forces backed by airpower tried for months to retake the city. The two sides fought to a stalemate after weeks of ruinous street-to-street fighting in densely populated districts on the city’s outskirts.

Yemen’s civil war, in which a Saudi-led coalition is fighting on the government’s side against the rebels, has pushed much of the country to the brink of famine. U.N. officials say 22 million of its 29 million people are in need of aid.