Dubai: A Saudi-led coalition battling rebels who hold Yemen's capital Sanaa began on Wednesday a unilateral cease-fire in the years-long war, even as insurgents said they rejected the proposal. The Saudi-proposed pause in fighting began at 6 a.m. ahead of the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. Several similar efforts have failed, and there was no immediate independent confirmation on whether hostilities paused between Saudi-led forces and Yemen's Houthi rebels.
The cease-fire announcement late on Tuesday had raised immediate doubts because the Iran-backed rebels had skipped an ongoing summit over the war in Saudi Arabia, called by the Saudi-based Gulf Cooperation Council, because of the venue at the adversary's territory. Within hours, Houthi official Mohammed al-Bukaiti rejected the offer over the continuing closure of Sanaa's airport and restrictions on the country's ports by the Saudi-led coalition.
If the blockade is not lifted, the declaration of the coalition of aggression to stop its military operations will be meaningless because the suffering of Yemenis as a result of the blockade is more severe than the war itself, he tweeted early Wednesday. The United Nations and others had been pushing the warring sides to reach a truce for Ramadan, as has tenuously occurred in the past.
Ramadan is likely to start this weekend, depending on the sighting of the new crescent moon. The GCC, whose members are Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, began the talks on Tuesday in Riyadh. On Wednesday, Saudi state television aired an open portion of the discussions lives. GCC Secretary-General Nayef al-Hajraf welcomed the Yemeni delegations to Riyadh, hailing the talks in his speech as a breakthrough to move Sanaa from war to peace."