Yemen’s main warring factions endorsed a U.N.-brokered humanitarian truce from midnight on Friday although heavy fighting on the ground and Saudi air strikes carried on relentlessly.
The week-long truce will end at the same time as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and aims to get aid to some 21 million Yemenis. All sides said they hoped a full ceasefire would follow.
27 May 2015 . Taiz, Yemen. REUTERS/Reuters Photographer
The body of a man lies under the rubble of a building destroyed by a Saudi-led air strike.
The U.N. has worked intensively to broker a ceasefire to halt more than three months of many-sided fighting inside the country and Saudi-led air strikes against the Houthis and their army allies that have killed more than 3,000 people.
A Saudi Arabia-led coalition of Arab states has been bombing the Iranian-allied Houthi rebel movement since late March in a bid to restore to power Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who has fled to Riyadh.
"We have agreed to go ahead, based on two major points. The first is the commitment of all parties not to violate this ceasefire, this humanitarian pause. The second is that humanitarian assistance can reach all parts of Yemen," said United Nations envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed.
5 Jul 2015 . Sanaa, Yemen. REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi
Houthi followers hold rifles and mock missiles as they shout slogans during a demonstration against the United Nations.
Relief agencies say the fighting and a near-blockade imposed by an alliance of Arab states, aimed at stopping weapons deliveries to the Houthis, have caused a humanitarian disaster in Yemen, with over 80 percent of its 25 million people now needing some form of emergency aid.
Rights groups have also condemned local blockades by armed groups on supplies headed for war-torn civilian areas.
3 May 2015 . Aden, Yemen. Reuters/Reuters Photographer
A Southern Popular Resistance fighter fires a weapon mounted on a truck during clashes with Houthi fighters.
The dominant Houthis shelled residential areas in the southern port of Aden overnight and pushed further into Yemen's eastern Hadramawt desert, the centre of the country's modest oil resources, fighting tribal militiamen, a local official said.
11 May 2015 . Sanaa, Yemen. REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi
A senior Western diplomat said the intensity of battles raging nationwide would render a swift calm difficult.
"It is still going to be a challenge to have this call heeded within the next 24 hours because of the entrenched fighting on the ground," the diplomat told Reuters.
24 May 2015 . Sanaa, Yemen. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Houthi rebels transport part of a Saudi fighter jet.
The Arab coalition has pounded the Houthis and their army allies from the air since March 26 as part of a bid to restore exiled president Hadi to power.
"We hope this truce will be the beginning of the end of the Saudi aggression and the end of the violation of United Nations conventions that the war of aggression on Yemen has seen,” said Mohammed al-Houthi, a top Houthi leader.
However, in a televised speech on Tuesday, Abdel-Malek al-Houthi, leader of the Houthi Ansarullah group, doubted that the ceasefire would hold.
"As for the truce, we don't have big hope in its success, because its success is linked to the commitment of the Saudi regime and its allies," he said.
24 Sep 2014 . Sanaa, Yemen. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Shi'ite Houthi rebels swim at the house of the business tycoon and Islah party leader Hameed al-Hamar after they took control of it.
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Yemen's government has demanded that the Houthis comply with a U.N. Security Council Resolution in April, which called on them to quit seized land and release prisoners.
The Houthis do not agree to those demands and view their takeover of the capital in September as part of a revolution against a corrupt government backed by the West.
Writing by Noah Browning, Mohammed Ghobari