UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed headed to Kuwait on 27 June and will then travel to Saudi Arabia in search of a draft peace deal for Yemen. An agreement between the warring factions in the country failed to materialise during the UN-initiated peace talks in Geneva that ended on 19 June.

Ould Cheikh Ahmad led the Geneva talks in the hope of reaching a preliminary agreement with the Houthi fighters, understood to be supported by Iran, that have gained control of large areas in Yemen, including the capital Sanaa. The envoy travelled to Kuwait on Saturday and will spend a full week in Riyadh before returning to Sanaa for another week of consultations.

These consultations are geared towards fostering further discussions on the draft principles paper initially developed in Geneva until a preliminary agreement for a ceasefire is reached.

The Houthi rebels along with their allies, comprising loyal followers of ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh, have overrun much of the Sunni-dominated state. Saudi Arabia, with the support of Kuwait, had led air strikes since March to stop the rebels from advancing into other areas of the country. Yemeni president Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi is currently living in exile in Saud Arabia.

Hamza al-Houthi, head of the Ansarullah delegation at the Geneva consultations, accused the UN of not doing anything to stop Saudi Arabia’s aggression in Yemen. The group asserts that the aggression violates “all international conventions as well as the UN charter”.  Ansarullah is the formal name of the Yemeni insurgency group, whose more popular name is taken from its leader Hussen Badreddin al-Houthi, who launched the insurgency in 2004 and died the same year.

Estimates put the number of casualties at 2,800 since the air strikes began in March, with a further 80 per cent of the population, equivalent to some 21 million people, now needing humanitarian assistance.

An oil refinery in Aden was attacked by Houthi fighters yesterday, a sign of the worsening security situation in the country.