ADEN: Several attacks rocked a fragile ceasefire in Yemen on Tuesday as the warring sides began UN-brokered peace talks in Switzerland, military and medical sources said.

The Saudi-led coalition, which launched an air war against the Houthi rebels and their allies in March, said the ceasefire began as scheduled at midday.

But just hours later, Yemeni rebel artillery and tanks killed seven civilians and wounded 15 in residential areas of Taez city, witnesses and medics said.

Two loyalists had already been killed in the east and mortar rounds hit government forces in the southwestern province of Taez after the truce took effect, officials said.

Later on Tuesday, rebels killed 15 pro-government fighters and wounded 20 in Mas in the eastern province of Marib, a military source said.

The violations came even after rebel military spokesman General Sharaf Luqman “welcomed” the UN call for a ceasefire, in a statement on their sabanews.net website.

He said he hoped “aggressor parties would truly and seriously commit to a halt in fighting”.

A spokesman for rebel-allied ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s General People’s Congress, which is represented at the Switzerland talks, made a similar statement.

The unidentified spokesman urged “all parties to commit to a complete and permanent ceasefire”, in a statement on the party’s almotamar.net website.

Previous UN efforts have failed to narrow differences, with ceasefire attempts foiled.

Speaking in Switzerland, the UN envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, called the truce “a critical first step towards building a lasting peace in the country”.

He said the peace talks “seek to establish a permanent ceasefire and pave the way for a return to a peaceful and orderly political transition”.UN spokesman Ahmad Fawzi confirmed that the talks had begun at an undisclosed location, with 12 negotiators and six advisers on each of the two delegations.

A lull in fighting is sorely needed in the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest nation, where the UN says an estimated 80 per cent of the population requires humanitarian aid.

Before the truce, clashes shook the flashpoint city of Taez and coalition warplanes bombed rebel positions.

Saba news agency later quoted local activists as saying rebels carried out “dozens of violations of the ceasefire” in Taez since midday.

Soon after the truce began, a Yemeni security official reported five mortar rounds targeted pro-Hadi forces in Shuraija, south of Taez.

In the eastern province of Marib, clashes killed two pro-Hadi fighters in the early afternoon before subsiding, military sources said.

Published in Dawn, December 16th, 2015