Fighting in which more than 6,400 people have been killed, half of
them civilians, has created a humanitarian crisis in one of the poorest
countries in the Middle East.
Aftermath of an airstrike in the Yemeni capital Sanaa
Yemen's two dominant political
movements on Saturday announced a 10-member governing council, pushing
ahead with plans to run the country as U.N.-sponsored talks to end a
16-month-old war drew to a close without a deal.
The announcement came as supporters of the internationally-recognised President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi,
who is backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition, launched a fresh offensive
to try to capture the capital Sanaa from the Iran-allied Houthis.
The armed Houthi movement and the party of Yemen's former president Ali Abdullah Saleh,
the General People's Congress (GPC), hold most of Yemen's northern
half, while Hadi's forces share control of the rest of the country with
local tribes.
Fighting in which more than 6,400
people have been killed, half of them civilians, has created a
humanitarian crisis in one of the poorest countries in the Middle East.
Al
Qaeda and its militant rival Islamic State have exploited the war to
try to recruit more followers and establish roots in the country, which
control major shipping lanes overlooking the Red Sea and the Gulf of
Aden,
In a brief statement issued in the Yemeni
capital Sanaa, the Houthi-run Saba news agency published the names of 10
officials who would comprise the political committee which would run
the country. Both parties would rotate the position of president and
vice president, who will be chosen from within the committee.
The
Houthis and the GPC last month cited a need to bring in all parties to
share in running Yemen in view of what they called the "continuing
Saudi-led aggression". But they insisted they would continue peace talks
in Kuwait.
The U.N. envoy to Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed
has slammed the proposal saying it gravely violated U.N. Security
Council resolutions on how to solve the conflict and warned the warring
parties against any "unilateral actions".
The
Kuwait talks are officially scheduled to end later on Saturday. The U.N.
envoy is said to be pushing to keep a fragile truce that had been in
effect in April, and wants both sides to agree to a new round of talks
at a future date.
The talks, held off and on since
April, have centred on a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for
the Houthis to withdraw from areas they had seized since 2014 and to
allow the government to resume its duties from Sanaa. The Houthis say
any withdrawal must be part of a wider deal on a broad government to run
the country.
But as the talks wind down, Hadi's
supporters have resumed an offensive to capture Sanaa and dislodge the
Houthis from other parts of the country. Residents reported heavy
fighting in Nehem, east of Sanaa, and in the north-eastern al-Jouf
province, next to Houthi's home province of Saada.
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