Saudi-led coalition announces 5-day Yemen ceasefire

The Saudi-led coalition that is carrying out a campaign of airstrikes against Houthi militants in Yemen has unilaterally declared a five-day humanitarian truce from Monday to allow aid deliveries, the official Saudi Press Agency reported on Saturday.

The ceasefire will take effect from midnight on Sunday, with the coalition reserving the right to respond to "military activity or movement" by the opposition Houthi forces that have been backed by supporters of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Further information about the deal is still emerging but two previous short-term truces, negotiated by the UN, have failed to bring about an end to the violence.

The news came just hours after air strikes killed at least 35 civilians and wounded dozens of others in southwest Yemen, medical sources said Saturday.

Women and children were among those killed in the Friday night strike in the town of Mokhba, close to the country’s third city of Taiz, and some 125 kilometres from Aden where the Houthi rebels have been beaten back this week after months of heavy fighting, the sources told AFP.

The raid hit a residential neighbourhood where employees of the town's power station lived, according to residents. They said several houses were destroyed and that dozens of people were wounded.

The Saba press agency, controlled by the Houthis, who have seized control of the capital and much of central Yemen, reported that 55 people were killed in the attack, which it denounced as a "Saudi crime".

Some witnesses said the neighbourhood in Mokhba had been targeted by mistake, although others alleged that the Houthis had taken up positions in the area.

In March, the coalition launched strikes on rebel positions after the Houthis swept into Sanaa and pushed south towards the port city of Aden, where President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi had taken refuge before fleeing to Riyadh. Both sides have since been criticised for not doing enough to stop civilian causalities, with Human Rights Watch accusing the Houthis of committing possible war crimes.

Coalition jets carried out fresh raids overnight on Houthi positions across Yemen, including around Aden, military sources said.

The United Nations says the conflict has killed more than 3,640 people, around half of them civilians, since late March.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Friday warned that intensifying violence in the country's south had created civilian suffering to reach "unprecedented levels".  

The ICRC voiced particular concern over worsening clashes in the southern governorates of Taiz and Aden, where pro-Hadi have made major gains.

"The suffering of the civilian population has reached unprecedented levels," the ICRC's mission chief in Yemen, Antoine Grand, said in a statement.  

In Aden and Taiz, "it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to reach affected areas, to evacuate the dead and the wounded and to provide life-saving assistance," Grand added, days after the airport in  Aden was "liberated" from pro-Houthis and just days after the UN said it had been able to deliver supplies for the first time in months.