Sanaa (AsiaNews / Agencies) - A humanitarian truce was launched last night at 23:00 (local time) by the coalition led by Saudi Arabia which for over a month has been bombing and fighting Houthi rebels.
The coalition spokesman, however, has made it clear that the ceasefire will be respected if the rebels respect it. So far, the ceasefire appears to be holding in Sanaa, Aden, and Lahj Abyane, but until minutes before the truce, there were bombings in the capital that hit a weapons cache of the rebels, causing 69 dead, mostly civilians, and 250 injured. In the last 24 hours there have been civilian casualties also in Aden and Taez.
The UN says up to now at least 1500 people - 828 of them civilians - have been killed by the coalition war, which is destroying many artistic sites of the ancient capital, considered a Unesco world heritage site.
The truce is supposed to allow the distribution of humanitarian aid to the population. The UN has prepared a platform in Djibouti, off the coast of Yemen. According to the international agency, at least 12 million people do not have secure access to food; in the regions affected by the conflict, there are more than 750,000 people without food or water.
The UN have been denouncing at length the high number of civilian casualties in the coalition war, as well as the humanitarian disaster -lack of food, water, medicine, fuel - caused by air and sea blockade imposed by the coalition.
An Iranian ship that is carrying humanitarian aid to Yemen, will distribute aid through the UN and therefore has been directed to Djibouti.
Iran is also suspected of supporting the Houthi rebels, who are traditionally Shiite, with weapons and wanting to extend their influence in the Arabian Peninsula.