Riyadh: The Arab Coalition in Yemen led by Saudi Arabia on Tuesday announced that it will halt military operations in Yemen starting from Wednesday morning to help create a positive atmosphere during the upcoming month of Ramzan.
“The joint forces command of the coalition announces a halt of military operations inside Yemen starting Wednesday at 6 am,” Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported, citing a statement from the coalition’s spokesman Brigadier General Turki al-Malki.
Turki Al-Maliki, stated that the ceasefire decision comes in response to the invitation submitted by the Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Nayef Al-Hajraf.
Earlier on Tuesday, Nayef Al-Hajraf, the Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), launched a call for a truce, coinciding with the start of the Yemeni-Yemeni consultations, on Tuesday, under the auspices of the council from March 29 to April 7.
He also called on the Yemeni Houthi group to attend the Riyadh consultations.
The coalition’s decision to stop its military operations comes days after the Houthi rebels announced a three-day truce, in steps that strengthen efforts to calm the conflict, which entered its eighth year on Sunday, March 27.
On March 15, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has announced hosting consultations for the Yemeni parties that started on Tuesday, March 29, in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, with the aim of achieving a ceasefire.
The last negotiations in which the Houthis participated were those that took place in Kuwait in 2016 under the auspices of the United Nations, but they did not succeed in achieving significant progress on the road to stopping the war, which entered its eighth year this month.
Yemen has been suffering for nearly seven years. A continuous war between government forces and the Houthi forces, which have controlled governorates, including the capital, Sanaa, since 2014.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people directly or indirectly and left millions on the brink of starvation in what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe.
This ongoing conflict has regional spillovers since March 2015, as a coalition led by neighboring Saudi Arabia has been carrying out military operations in support of government forces, in the face of the Iranian-backed Houthis.
This tragic war also led to the loss of the country’s economy 126 billion dollars, in one of the worst humanitarian and economic crises in the world.
On December 6, 2021, the Yemeni currency witnessed a sharp decline, reaching its lowest level ever against the dollar in the transactions of the unofficial exchange market in the port city of Aden and the south of the country, recording 1700 per dollar for the first time in the country’s history.
