UN: Yemen's Warring Sides Resume Talks on Ending Taiz Siege

CAIRO (AP) -- Yemen's warring parties resumed talks Sunday on reopening roads in Taiz and other provinces, the United Nations said, after they agreed to renew a nationwide cease-fire.

The U.N. mission to Yemen said delegations from the internationally recognized government and the country's Iran-backed Houthi rebels began their second round of direct discussion in the Jordanian capital of Amman.

The mission did not provide further details.

The two sides did not reach an agreement on lifting the rebels blockade of Taiz, Yemen's third largest city, in their first round of talks late last month.

Reopening the roads around Taiz and elsewhere in Yemen is part of a truce the U.N. brokered early in April. It was the first nationwide cease-fire in in six years in Yemen's brutal conflict, now in its eighth year.

The Houthis have imposed a siege on government-held city of Taiz, the capital of the province by the same name, since March 2016.

The two sides agreed on Thursday to extend the truce for more two months after concerted pressure from the U.N. and international aid groups.

Yemen's civil war erupted in 2014, when the Houthis seized the capital of Sanaa and much of northern Yemen and forced the government into exile. The Saudi-led coalition entered the war in early 2015 to try restore the government to power.

The conflict has created one of the world's worst humanitarian crises and killed over over 150,000 people, including over 14,500 civilians.