The team led by Patrick Cammaert, a retired Dutch general arrived in Aden where he is due to meet with leaders, according to UN sources.
The head of a United Nations (UN) mission monitoring a ceasefire in Yemen’s Hudaida arrived in Aden airport on Saturday, a UN source said.
Retired Dutch Major General Patrick Cammaert, after meeting government officials in Aden, will travel to Sanaa and then to the Red Sea port city of Hudaida, the source said.
The United Nations Security Council on Friday unanimously approved the deployment of a UN advance team to monitor a ceasefire in Yemen’s Hudaida region after days of wrangling that pitted the United States against ally Britain.
The Council authorised UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to deploy – for an initial 30 days – an advance team to begin monitoring and to support and facilitate the deal between the warring parties.
After a week of UN-sponsored peace talks in Sweden, the Iran-aligned Houthi group and Saudi-backed Yemen government foes agreed last week to stop fighting in the Red Sea port city of Hudaida and withdraw forces. The truce began on Tuesday.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric urged all parties “to abide by the commitments made in Stockholm.”.
“We’ll be deploying additional personnel in the coming days as we scale up to support and facilitate the implementation of the agreement,” he said, stressing that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is insisting that monitors are deployed very quickly.
‘World’s worst humanitarian crisis’
The war between the Houthi rebels and troops loyal to President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi escalated in 2015, when he fled into Saudi exile and the coalition intervened.
Since then, the war has killed some 10,000 people, according to the World Health Organization, although human rights groups say the real death toll could be five times as high.
The conflict has also pushed 14 million people to the brink of famine in what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
