The Saudi-Emirati coalition announced the extension of the unilateral ceasefire in Yemen for an additional month.

A spokesman for the coalition, Turki al-Maliki, said that the announcement of the cease-fire came at the request of the international envoy Martin Griffiths to allow the opportunity to make progress in the negotiations on a permanent ceasefire.

The truce announced - unilaterally - by the Saudi-led coalition for two weeks in Yemen, ended on Thursday without stopping the battles between the Houthis and the legitimate forces supported by the Saudi-Emirati coalition, especially since the Houthi group expressed from the beginning its rejection of the truce.

The coalition's unilateral announcement of the armistice came in response to a call by the United Nations to stop the fighting to allow international efforts to prevent the outbreak of the Corona epidemic in Yemen, and to create the atmosphere for a possible settlement ending the war that has lasted for more than five years.

Smoke rises due to a raid by a Saudi-Emirati coalition aircraft on Sanaa (Reuters)

Rejection and accusations
The Houthis have rejected the declared truce and accused the coalition of "practicing fraud and misleading the world."

Their spokesman, Muhammad Abd al-Salam, said in a tweet published on April 13 that the ceasefire by the coalition "was not achieved in the first place. Rather, the air strikes and the advance of crawlers (crawl operations) escalated."

Earlier, the Reuters news agency said that the United Nations had tried in the past two weeks to conduct video-based talks between the parties to the conflict in Yemen, in order to stabilize the armistice and agree on confidence-building measures between the belligerents in preparation for the resumption of peace talks aimed at ending the Yemeni crisis.

The Houthis had controlled state institutions in Sana'a, expelled the legitimate government in late 2014, controlled most of the northern governorates, and marched toward Aden (south) before the Saudi-led coalition intervened in March 2015.