Clashes erupt in Yemen after peace talk
Clashes erupted on Tuesday in Yemen just minutes after a ceasefire deal took effect in the country’s flashpoint port city of Hodeidah, while the UN Security Council is considering actions to back the deal.
Artillery shelling and heavy machine-gun fire shook districts in the south and east of the strategic city late on Monday in the final hour before the cease-fire took effect at midnight, according to Yemeni officials.
Fighting subsided as the ceasefire took effect, with only the sporadic sound of machine guns heard in the city, whose ports serve as a crucial gateway for humanitarian aid and handle about 70 percent of Yemen’s imports.
The fighting took place as the two sides were declaring their intention to observe the cease-fire agreed to last week during the United Nations-sponsored talks in Sweden between the government of Yemen and the rebels known as Houthis.
The cease-fire deal signed between the two warring rivals called for full withdrawal of all armed groups from Hodeidah and its strategic seaports, and included an “immediate cease-fire” in Hodeidah and its surroundings.
Under the agreement, a joint committee led by UN officers will oversee the cease-fire and the redeployment of the warring parties’ forces out of Hodeidah, which is currently controlled by the Houthis. Local authorities and police will run the city and its three ports under UN supervision, and the two sides are barred from bringing in reinforcements.
The UN Security Council said on Monday it would ask Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to submit proposals by the end of the month on how to monitor the agreed ceasefire.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the details on how the mission is implemented, including the logistical and security information, are “being worked out”, and the monitors would be unarmed as “this is not a peacekeeping mission”.
The Houthis launched a large military campaign and seized the capital Sanaa in late 2014 along with other main provinces, forcing Yemeni President Abd-Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and his government to flee into the southern port city of Aden. A Saudi-led coalition has been fighting the Houthis since 2015.
The war has killed more than 10,000 people and created a serious humanitarian crisis. UN officials said that 22 million of its 29 million people are in need of aid. For weeks, humanitarian agencies had been warning of famine in Yemen, calling for international efforts at the port of Hodeidah to insure inflow of imports and humanitarian aid.