Yemen’s Ansarullah Says Ceasefire Reached for Hudaydah
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Spokesman for Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement Mohammad Abdulsalam, who headed a delegation in the UN-brokered peace talks in Sweden, said a ceasefire was reached in the last day of the talks for the western port city of al-Hudaydah.
Abdulsalam said the warring parties agreed on Thursday to a ceasefire for the flashpoint city of Hudaydah and its surrounding governorate, the Arabic-language Al Mayadeen TV reported.
“We agreed that the United Nations should monitor the process of inspection of ships in the port of Hudaydah,” he added.
“We gave many concessions on Hudaydah to save the Yemeni people, and we retreated from our positions,” the senior Yemeni official noted.
The Ansarullah suggested that the passenger planes should go to Jordan and Egypt before departure for Sana’a, Abdulsalam went on to say.
The Yemeni peace talks opened in the Swedish capital of Stockholm on December 7 on an upbeat note, with the warring sides agreeing to a broad prisoner swap, boosting hopes that the talks would not deteriorate into further violence as in the past.
Some 8.4 million Yemenis are facing starvation as a result of the Saudi-led aggression, although the United Nations has warned that will probably rise to 14 million.
Three-quarters of impoverished Yemen’s population, or 22 million people, require aid.
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.
The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured until then. The war and the accompanying blockade have also caused famine across Yemen.