A ceasefire in Yemen’s civil war will start on December 14, the eve of planned peace talks in Switzerland next week, the head of the Houthi delegation to the peace talks said on Saturday.
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The Emirati state news agency WAM separately confirmed al-Ketbi’s death.
The UN invited Hadi’s government and the Houthis to peace negotiations after the two sides agreed on a draft agenda and ground rules.
Abdulla agrees that IS and Al-Qaeda, already well established in Yemen’s south, are “a common enemy that puts pressure on both sides of the Yemeni conflict, as well as Gulf countries”. The U.N sponsored talks will be attended by senior officials from both sides of the gruesome civil war that has ravaged the region and claimed nearly 6,000 lives. Incidentally, peace talks held in June had failed to reach any conclusion because both the parties started hurling accusations for not offering any acceptable compromises that would end the conflict. It has also pushed Yemen to the brink of starvation.
The Houthis announced in a statement that the two coalition officials were killed when the rebels fired a long-range missile at a secret headquarters of the pro-government military leadership close to the strategic strait of Bab al-Mandab.
Fierce fighting between the rebels and pro-Hadi forces continued on Monday in the southern Daleh province, witnesses said.
Officials from the General People’s Congress who are loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh are expected at the meeting in Geneva.
The warring sides have agreed to talks despite protracted differences, including over UN Security Council Resolution 2216, which calls for rebels to withdraw from key cities and surrender their weapons.
There was also no word from a Saudi-led coalition, which has conducted air strikes against the rebels since March, despite reassurement last week by the United Nations envoy that Riyadh had promised to pause its aerial assault during talks.
In November, Hadi returned to Aden and declared it his provisional capital.
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According to the United Nations, the war has killed at least 5,878 people so far since the fighting escalated after the Saudi-led coalition began launching airstrikes against rebel positions in March.
