Fighting between Saudi-led coalition forces and Houthi rebels in Yemen has flared up again around the Red Sea port of Hodeidah despite UN calls for a ceasefire, Yemeni officials and witnesses have said.
The escalation after a recent lull began late on Monday with coalition airstrikes against the Houthis in and around the city.
Street fighting was also under way in the centre of Hodeidah and the al-Saleh district.
Earlier, the rebels said they had fired a ballistic missile into Saudi Arabia in response to an attempted border incursion and another airstrike, adding that they reserved the right to respond to attacks.
The missile attack on Monday night came hours after the rebels said they would stop firing rockets into Saudi Arabia as part of peace efforts.
The coalition has been attempting to retake Hodeidah from the rebels since the summer and its forces are three miles (5km) from the port, through which the majority of Yemen’s food, fuel and aid flows.
The renewed fighting is a blow to UN efforts to end the three-year war. Martin Griffiths, the UN special envoy for Yemen, announced on Friday that both sides had agreed to attend peace talks in Sweden “soon”. On Monday, the internationally backed government in Yemen said it would attend, but insisted the Houthis do so “unconditionally”.
The US-backed, Saudi-led coalition has been fighting on the side of the government against the rebels since March 2015, in a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and pushed much of the country to the brink of starvation.
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