UN Envoy Says Truce Has Significantly Reduced Fighting In Yemen

By Staff, Agencies

The United Nations’ envoy to Yemen hopes that a UN-brokered ceasefire in the Arab country would be extended, saying the two-month truce, of which only two weeks are left, has significantly reduced fighting in Yemen.

Hans Grundberg said on Tuesday that the truce in Yemen is holding in military terms and it has had a considerable positive impact on the daily lives of many Yemenis.

“Fighting has sharply reduced with no aerial attacks emanating from Yemen across its borders and no confirmed airstrikes inside Yemen,” he told reporters after a closed briefing to the UN Security Council.

“Front lines across Yemen have quietened down significantly, and there are reports of increasing humanitarian access, including in some frontline locations that had previously been extremely difficult to access,” he said.

Grundberg announced on April 1 that he had secured the truce between the warring sides, seven years after Saudi Arabia and its regional allies launched a devastating military campaign against Yemen in response to the fall of the former, Riyadh-friendly Yemeni regime.

The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people across Yemen and turned the entire country into the scene of what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, but it has failed to re-install the Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi regime.

Since the beginning of the truce, Sanaa has censured Riyadh for repeated violations and warned the kingdom that the Yemeni armed forces will not sit idly in the face of continuous Saudi-led raids on their country.

Despite his positive assessment of the implementation of the truce, Grundberg said “We continue to see concerning reports of continued fighting involving incidents of civilian casualties despite overall reduction.”

He also said the first commercial flight in almost six years took off from Sana’a airport for Jordan’s capital, Amman, on Monday and another flight brought Yemenis back. A second flight to Amman has been scheduled for today.