Guns largely silent in Yemen as factions stick to UN-brokered truce

Fighting has largely stopped in Yemen’s key battlefields as rival factions stick to the UN-brokered humanitarian truce, local military officials told Arab News on Saturday.

The UN’s Yemen envoy Hans Grundberg on Friday announced that the Iran-backed Houthis and the internationally recognized government agreed to a two-month truce coming into effect on Saturday, the first day of Ramadan.

The parties agreed to halt ground, air and cross-border strikes, allow oil tankers to enter Hodeidah seaport, permit flights to depart and land at Sanaa airport, and lift the siege of Taiz.

Local officials said that fighting and shelling between government troops and the Houthis have largely subsided in the central province of Marib and outside the city of Taiz, amid reports that the Houthis are still amassing forces in Marib.

“Fighting has stopped in Marib. There is a limited exchange of mortar and heavy gun fire and the enemy is deploying forces,” a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity told Arab News, adding that army troops and allied tribesmen were bracing for Houthi violations of the truce.

Thousands of combatants and civilians have been killed since early last year in the province of Marib when the Houthis resumed a major offensive to seize control of the energy-rich city of Marib, the Yemeni government’s last bastion in the northern part of the country.

Despite aggressive missile, drone and ground attacks on the city, the Houthis failed to take control of the city and suffered thousands of casualties.