(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The United States said yesterday that it was working to find a solution for Yemen's crisis as the UN urged a truce, warning the country was on the verge of collapse.
US Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters in Sri Lanka that it was not inevitable that Yemen would become a failed state, stressing however that Washington was working "very hard" to find a solution.
"I will not say yet that the verdict is in on what Yemen is going to be because we are trying very hard, working with the UN, working with our friends in the region," he said. "We are working hard to secure a negotiated process through the UN which will bring the parties together, Yemenites to negotiate the future of Yemen," he said.
Kerry was speaking a day after the UN Security Council failed to back a Russian appeal for an immediate ceasefire or humanitarian pauses in Yemen.
Kerry said he hoped a solution would be found soon. "We are having discussions over the course of every day right now in order to push towards this and our hope is that the UN process may be able (to) actually take hold before too long," he said.
Yemeni Houthi rebels called on the UN to seek an end to Saudi Arabian air strikes against them that they described as blatant aggression against the country.
"We want to emphasise the grave and tragic situation that comes in the light of the continued Saudi blatant aggression on our country and our people," said the Ansar Allah Zaydi Houthi movement's foreign relations official Hussein Al Ezzi, in a letter addressed to the UN secretary general.
However, fighting raged overnight in southern Yemen as Saudi-led warplanes struck rebel positions. In Aden, dozens of people were killed when a missile hit a rebel-held hospital, while in Yemen's third largest city Taez, 35 rebels were killed and 62 wounded in an air strike.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged a humanitarian pause in the conflict as embattled aid agencies say they desperately need supplies, including fuel to run infrastructure such as hospitals. "The services still available in the country in terms of health, water, food are quickly disappearing because fuel is no longer being brought into the country," said the UN's Johannes van der Klaauw.
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