“We have agreed to the ceasefire to lift the suffering of our people and to deliver humanitarian assistance to them”, said Houthi rebel spokesman Mohammed Abdel Salam.
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According to officials in the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, Western countries are keen to avoid a power vacuum that could give jihadist militants the haven they now enjoy in the southern port of Aden and other lawless areas.
Previous truces and U.N.-brokered talks to resolve the conflict have ended in failure.
The Saudis and their predominantly Sunni allies consider the Houthis, who hail from northern Yemen, to be proxies for the Shiite government of Iran. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.
And Arab states which intervened militarily in March to back President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi’s government have found themselves drawn further into a quagmire in the deeply tribal country, home to what the United States considers to be Al-Qaeda’s deadliest branch, experts say.
Earlier in the day, ground fighting and coalition airstrikes continued across the country, killing at least 34 people, including 10 civilians, according to security and medical officials.
Pro-rebel media reported that al-Sahyan and al-Kitabi died in a rocket attack by the Houthis on a Saudi-led alliance base near Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest province. A spokesperson for the Houthi rebels, Mohammed Abdul-Salam, acknowledged the truce on Saturday, Reuters reported. Hence, some regional experts fear these talks could end in a stalemate, which has been the case for the past few years.
The announcement comes as Saudi Arabia leads a military intervention in Yemen against Shiite rebels and is part of the US-led coalition bombing the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria.
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Forces loyal to the exiled Yemeni government and the Ansarullah Houthi rebels will begin a seven-day cease-fire midnight Monday as delegates from both parties are due to participate in a new round of United Nations talks in Switzerland Tuesday. A first round of peace talks in June failed to bring a solution to the conflict, while a ceasefire in May and another in July were unsuccessful due to accusations of violations by both sides. Hadi’s administration even added that the ceasefire in Yemen would be subjected to automatically renewal if the Houthis abided by it.
