Red Cross: Fighting Grows in Yemen's Taiz, Situation 'Dire

At least 40 people were killed, including several fishermen, when Saudi-led coalition strikes hit two Yemeni islands on the Red Sea overnight, several locals said on Saturday.

Taiz, considered Yemen's third largest city and cultural capital, has suffered huge destruction since becoming a main battleground in the country's war.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement on Friday that checkpoints run by fighters affiliated with the Houthis are exacerbating "the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation" in Taez.

A naval blockade put in place by that coalition has prevented sea-going vessels from bringing fuel supplies to Yemen, with drastic effects on hospitals in particular, Ould Cheikh Ahmed said.

Taiz's civilian population is bearing the brunt of the siege as they struggle to meet their most basic needs, including potable water.

Colville further said that the health system in Taiz is nearly collapsing.

The pro-Saudi forces tried to appear upbeat about this latest fighting, however, bragging that they'd "repelled" a Houthi offensive trying to unseat them from one of the districts and killed 22 Houthi fighters in doing so.

Saudi Arabia has been leading an Arab military intervention since March to try to restore Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and his government, forced into exile by an advance of Houthi fighters allied to Iran. In Bayda province, six Houthis were killed in an airstrike by the Saudi-led coalition that hit a rebel camp, according to security officials and witnesses who declined to be named.

The United Nations special envoy for Yemen said Friday he will start working immediately with the government and Shiite rebels on an agenda, date and format for peace talks.

The emissary, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, told the Security Council that the Huthi rebels and backers of former president Ali Abdallah Saleh had "clearly committed" to carrying out the Security Council resolution, 2216, that calls for a negotiated withdrawal by the rebels "from Yemen's key cities and a surrender of all heavy weapons to the state".

Fighting in Yemen has killed more than 4,000 people, leaving the Arab world's poorest country in the grip of a humanitarian crisis and on the brink of starvation.

Previous U.N.-sponsored peace talks faltered in June after Hadi's government demanded that the Houthis pull out of cities captured since last September as a precondition for a ceasefire.