Dubai: An uneasy calm returned to the battleground Yemeni city of Hodeida on Thursday after new overnight skirmishes as the warring parties await the promised deployment of UN staff to oversee a hard-won but fragile truce.
Military officials and residents have reported intermittent fighting between Saudi-backed government forces and Iran-backed Al Houthi militants since a new UN-brokered ceasefire came into effect in the Red Sea port city on Tuesday.
A pro-government official told AFP that four loyalists were wounded on Wednesday night in an exchange of fire.
“The exchange of fire lasted for about half an hour, and there is uneasy calm this morning,” he said.
The official added there has been intermittent fighting on a number of battlefronts in Hodeida province, including the districts of Hays and Al Tuhayta.
Pro-government forces and Al Houthi militants exchanged accusations on Thursday that the other side was violating the ceasefire agreement reached at talks in Sweden earlier this month.
UN observers are due in Yemen to head up monitoring teams made up of government and militant representatives tasked with overseeing the implementation of the UN-brokered ceasefire, under the auspices of a Redeployment Coordination Committee.
The UN chair of that committee, Patrick Cammaert, convened its first meeting by videoconference from New York on Wednesday “to discuss the general outlines of its work, including agreement of a code of conduct”, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
UN chief Antonio Guterres was “breathing down the neck” of officials to make sure the UN observers are deployed as soon as possible, Dujarric said.
He added that Cammaert will head on Thursday to Jordan’s capital Amman, from where he will travel to the Yemeni capital Sana’a and Hodeida.
Brigadier Ahmad Al Kokbani, a Yemeni government representative on the committee, told AFP that the observers’ meeting with Cammaert covered the bases of the committee’s work.
“Cammaert asked members of the team to work diligently in calming the situation and to reject any violations (of the truce deal),” he said.
The Saudi-led coalition said Wednesday that the hard-won ceasefire agreement will collapse if militant violations persist and the United Nations does not intervene.
The Redeployment Coordination Committee’s observers are due to oversee the withdrawal of the warring parties from Hodeida, including a militant pullout from the city’s docks that are the entry point for 80 per cent of Yemeni imports and nearly all UN-supervised humanitarian aid.
The committee chair is expected to report to the Security Council on a weekly basis as part of a major diplomatic push that is seen as the best chance yet to end the four-year conflict.
Hodeida has been the focus of fighting this year, raising global fears that a full-scale assault could cut off supplies to 15.9 million people.
A Saudi-led alliance intervened in the war in 2015 to restore the legitimate government of Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi that was ousted from the capital, Sana’a, in 2014 by Al Houthis, who control major population centres.
Yemeni forces have massed on the outskirts of Hodeida to try to seize the port.
They accuse Iran of smuggling in weapons to sustain Al Houthis’ war efforts.
