Sanaa--As aid agencies said they were starting to deliver assistance, residents of the rebel-held capital Sanaa told AFP the ceasefire came as a much-needed relief.
"We hope this truce becomes permanent. We finally managed to sleep peacefully last night," said 25-year-old Mohammed al-Saadi.
More than 1,500 people have been killed since mid-March in the air campaign and fighting between rebel forces and Hadi loyalists, according to the United Nations.
The Huthi rebels, allied with army units loyal to ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, have taken control of large parts of Yemen including Sanaa and were advancing on Hadi's southern stronghold of Aden when Riyadh launched the air campaign.
The weeks since the start of the air war have seen repeated warnings of a dire humanitarian crisis, with shortages of food, water, fuel and medical aid.
The UN's food agency said Wednesday that the situation in Yemen had become "catastrophic".
Dominique Burgeon, emergencies director at the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization, told AFP the problems civilians faced were "very serious and at the moment the country lacks everything".
UN agencies and private aid groups had been preparing to boost their efforts since the ceasefire was announced last week and on Wednesday began taking steps.
A ship chartered by the United Nations World Food Programme, which arrived in Yemen last week, began distributing its shipment of much-needed fuel to areas across the country, an industry official in the port city of Hodeida told AFP.
The country has been suffering from severe fuel shortages -- grinding humanitarian operations to a halt -- and news of the deliveries prompted motorists to start queueing at petrol stations in Sanaa.
The head of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Yemen, Marie-Elisabeth Ingres, told AFP that her group was hoping to "take advantage of the truce that seems to be holding".
AFP
