Search results

The Houthis, Saudi-led coalition and Yemeni government agreed a further two-month extension to their cease-fire, taking it to early October. The terms are the same as the previous two periods, but all have given a commitment to intensify efforts to expand the terms of the truce, first agreed in April and extended by 60 days in June.

GSN Risk grade: F6. UN truce: United Nations special envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg is pushing the main warring parties to extend their truce beyond the current end-date of 2 August.

In a special report from Yemen's Taiz, GSN spoke to local residents and activists about the impact of the continued blockade of roads into and out of a city that is besieged despite a United Nations-backed truce which included provisions for the seven-year blockade to be lifted.

Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council chairman Rashad Al-Alimi has also been on a regional tour - visiting Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar - as a recently-extended truce with the Houthi rebels continues to hold.

United Nations envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg told the UN Security Council on 14 June there had been no confirmed airstrikes inside Yemen, or cross-border attacks from Yemen, since the first country-wide ceasefire in six years, announced on 2 April. A 60-day extension to the truce was announced by Grundberg on 2 June.  

A 60-day extension to the truce between the Houthis and Yemeni government-aligned forces offers some hope that a resolution of the region’s most destructive conflict may be getting closer, but kidnappings and attacks by Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) point to another threat to stability in the south, which could yet drag the United States and others back into the crisis zone.

A five-day exercise led by Saudi Arabian Western Fleet commander Rear Admiral Yahya Bin Mohammed Al-Asiri and involving Egyptian, Djiboutian, Jordanian, Sudanese and Yemeni forces concluded in June.

Donors have pledged $33m for a United Nations plan to secure the decaying FSO Safer oil tanker, moored off the Yemen coast. The funds were pledged at an event in The Hague on 11 May co-hosted by the UN and the Dutch government.

Regular analysis of satellite imagery of Perim Island in the Bab El Mandeb strait over recent weeks suggests a new 1,900m runway planned by the UAE remains incomplete, although enough of it has been built to mean it is probably usable by tactical transport aircraft.

GSN Risk Grade – F6. Alimi takes charge: Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) chairman Rashad Mohammed Al-Alimi held talks with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman Bin Abdelaziz at Al-Salam Palace in Jeddah on 28 April, with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman in attendance.

Oman has used its good offices to secure the release of more than a dozen foreign nationals in Yemen, including crew members of the UAE-flagged cargo ship Rwabee, which was captured by Houthi rebels in January.

Former US ambassador Richard Olson is expected to plead guilty to charges including illegal lobbying on behalf of the Qatari government, The New York Times reported on 27 April.

GSN provides brief profiles of the eight members of the Yemeni Presidential Leadership Council, which was formed at a GCC-convened summit in Riyadh in late March/early April.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Yemen have announced that their ambassadors to Lebanon will to return to Beirut, some five months after they were withdrawn over comments by then Lebanese interior minister George Kordahi about the Yemen war.

The Riyadh summit convened by the GCC delivered more than expected, with the formation of a new Yemeni governing council which provides a united front against the Houthis.