Local Editor
"It has been decided to begin a 48-hour ceasefire from 12:00 noon Yemen time on Saturday," the kingdom said in a statement.
Riyadh claims that the announcement followed a request for a ceasefire by Yemen’s fugitive president Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi to Saudi King Salman.
There was no immediate reaction to the news by the Houthi Ansarullah movement, which is fighting the Saudis and its allies in Yemen.
The Ansarullah movement expressed its readiness to observe a ceasefire on Wednesday after US Secretary of State John Kerry said Saudi Arabia and the Houthis had agreed to observe a cessation of hostilities.
Saudi military spokesman Ahmed Asiri acknowledged in February that the kingdom was stuck in a "static war" against its southern neighbor.
While the war has proven big business for the US and the UK, it has taken a massive toll on the Saudi kingdom’s economy.
The US military provides aerial refueling to Saudi bombers conducting airstrikes on Yemen. Washington has also been providing logistic and surveillance support to the kingdom in the bloody campaign.
Meanwhile, the British government has been training Saudi pilots. London is also one of the biggest arms suppliers to Riyadh, including cluster bombs which have been used in Yemen.
The war has killed at least 11,400 civilians, according to a recent tally by a Yemeni monitoring group.
In October, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said Saudi Arabia was using starvation as a tactic in its war against Yemen through its crippling blockade that the US helps to implement.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
