RIYADH/ADEN — Saudi-led coalition forces on Saturday announced a humanitarian truce in their campaign against Houthi forces in Yemen. It will take effect on Sunday evening at 11:59 p.m. local time, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) said.
The truce is to last for five days to allow for humanitarian aid to be delivered to Yemen. The statement by the Arab coalition stressed that they would respond to any violation of the truce by the Houthis.
The decision was taken at the request of Yemen's President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi, who has taken refuge in the Saudi capital with much of his government.
Hadi, whose supporters have recaptured most of the southern port of Aden from the Houthi rebels after four months of war, wanted the truce for the "delivery and distribution of the maximum amount of humanitarian and medical aid," SPA said.
Two previous ceasefires brokered by the UN failed to take hold.
Meanwhile, the Houthi-controlled Saba news agency quoted a local source in Taiz as saying that the bombing early on Saturday had targeted the Mokha area inhabited mostly by engineers and workers of a power station and some displaced families.
The frontlines of Yemen's war shifted to the favor of the Gulf Arab coalition earlier this month when in coordination with forces loyal to Hadi they managed to drive the Houthis out of the southern port city of Aden and much of the surrounding areas.
Since then warplanes have been landing in Aden airport carrying equipment necessary to help re-open the facility which had been shut down by the fighting. Aden and the other southern provinces have been largely inaccessible to UN food aid, and about 13 million people are thought to be in dire need of food.
In the Red Sea port city of Hoeaida, a bomb that was planted in an oil tanker on its way to some oil facilities was diffused and an investigation of the incident was ongoing.
