Five day humanitarian truce in Yemen to begin Sunday

The ceasefire will take effect on Sunday evening at 11:59 pm local time to allow humanitarian aid to be delivered to Yemen.

A Saudi soldier stands guard at the international airport of Yemen's southern port city of Aden on July 24, 2015. Faisal Al Nasser/Reuters
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ADEN // The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen will begin a five-day unilateral ceasefire at midnight on Sunday to ease the delivery of vital aid.

The Yemeni president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi asked King Salman for the ceasefire amid growing concerns about a humanitarian crisis.

Riyadh said hostilities would cease but the coalition reserved the right to respond to “military activity or movement” by Houthi rebels.

Mr Hadi, who has taken refuge in the Saudi capital with much of his government, wanted the ceasefire for the “delivery and distribution of the maximum amount of humanitarian and medical aid”, Riyadh said.

Mr Hadi’s supporters have recaptured most of the southern port of Aden from the rebels after four months of war.

Two previous UN-brokered ceasefires failed to take hold.

The coalition, which includes the UAE, began a campaign of air strikes in March after the Iranian-backed Houthis swept into Sanaa and pushed south towards Aden, where Mr Hadi initially took refuge before fleeing to Riyadh.

Coalition jets carried out fresh raids overnight on Houthi positions across Yemen, including around Aden.

The United Nations says the conflict has killed more than 3,640 people since late March.

On Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross issued a new warning on the level of civilian suffering.

The ICRC said intensifying violence in the south was making the delivery of emergency medical aid impossible.

It voiced particular concern over worsening clashes in the southern provinces of Taez and Aden.

“The suffering of the civilian population has reached unprecedented levels,” ICRC mission chief in Yemen Antoine Grand said.

In Aden and Taez, “it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to reach affected areas, to evacuate the dead and the wounded and to provide life-saving assistance”.

The aid group urged both pro-Hadi forces and the rebels and their allies, mostly renegade military forces loyal to the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, to let humanitarian groups work.

Aden’s international airport was closed for months, but recent gains by Hadi loyalists allowed it to reopen this week.

Four aircraft carrying humanitarian supplies have since landed there, although the airport came under fire from rebels on Thursday as a Saudi plane was unloading.

On Friday, an Emirati plane landed in Aden at dawn, bringing humanitarian aid to the southern Yemeni city only hours after its airport came under rocket fire from rebels.

The ICRC warned that, as the fighting escalated, so too did “shortages of water, food and fuel across the country”.

A boat chartered by the Red Cross and loaded with humanitarian supplies successfully docked at Aden on Thursday.

The ICRC insisted that aid should not be held hostage by the shifting situation on the ground.

“All sides must facilitate our access and respect our mandate,” it said.

A humanitarian ceasefire declared by the UN earlier this month was not respected, and the world body warned that Yemen was just “one step away from famine”.

* Agencies