Efforts to renew Yemen's truce ended in failure

The UN's efforts to extend a six-month truce between Yemen's government and Iran-backed Houthi rebels appear to have ended in failure as the deadline expired on Sunday night without word of a renewed agreement.

The ceasefire, which went into effect at 7pm on April 2 and was extended twice for two-month periods, brought relative calm across the country after seven years of war.

The UN's Yemen envoy Hans Grundberg visited the rebel-held capital Sanaa for talks on Wednesday and left without making a comment. But on Saturday, the Houthis declared the ceasefire to be at “a dead end”.

“Over the past six months, we haven't seen any serious willingness to address humanitarian issues as a top priority,” the Houthis said.

Mr Grundberg met the head of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council, Rashad Al Alimi, in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Sunday just hours before the truce was to expire.

The government's Saba News Agency said Mr Alimi discussed with the UN envoy “opportunities to extend the truce, with the Houthi militias' continued intransigence towards all efforts aimed at alleviating the human suffering of the Yemeni people”.

Mr Alimi said the government remained committed to achieving peace and condemned the Houthis' resistance to efforts to stop the bloodshed despite its initiatives to ease “suffering throughout the country, including those under the force of the Houthi militia's control”, Saba reported.

Yemen's war between the Houthis and a Saudi-led coalition since 2014 has left hundreds of thousands dead. It has created what the UN has described as the world's worst humanitarian crisis.