SANAA, Yemen – Yemen’s key port city of Hodeida was calm Tuesday morning, hours after a U.N.-mediated cease-fire went into effect between government-allied forces and the country’s rebels, Yemeni officials said.
Fighting subsided as the cease-fire took effect, with only the sporadic sound of automatic weapons fire heard in the city, where the port handles about 70 percent of Yemen’s imports.
Yemen’s four-year conflict pits the internationally recognized government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, against Shiite rebels known as Houthis.
The government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi called for its forces to “cease-fire in both Hodeida city and the province” also named Hodeida, according to a statement from Hadi’s Defense Ministry. The rebels also welcomed the cease-fire in the key port city.
The agreement came during U.N.-sponsored talks in Sweden last week. 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 port facilities under U.N. supervision, and the two sides are barred from bringing in reinforcements.
U.N. envoy Martin Griffith has said the committee is expected to start its work swiftly “to translate the momentum built up in Sweden into achievements on the ground.”
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. (Fox News)