CAIRO, December 16. /TASS/. The United Nations scheduled the start of ceasefire between Yemeni pro-government forces and the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement in the city of Hudaydah for December 18, Al Jazeera reported on Sunday citing a spokesperson for the Houthi leadership.

According to the source, Ansar Allah "has received a UN message, which sets the date to begin the ceasefire between the warring parties in the city of Hudaydah on December 18."

Stockholm hosted consultations on settling the conflict in Yemen from December 6 through 13. The parties, which met for the first time over that past 30 months, have signed an agreement on prisoner exchange and exchanged lists of prisoners subject to the swap. The process is expected to be over before January 20, 2019, if there are no more disagreements between the parties.

Apart from that, the Yemeni government and the Ansar Allah (Houthi) rebel movement reached an agreement on cessation of hostilities in the port of Hudaydah. However they failed to reach accord on issues of the operation of the airport in Sanaa and consolidation of the national bank.

Armed confrontation between government forces and Ansar Allah groups has been going on in Yemen since August 2014, reaching the most active phase in March 2015 after the Saudi-led coalition invaded the country. According to Yemen’s Legal Center for Rights and Development, more than 10,000 civilians, including almost 2,400 children and about 2,000 women, have been killed in the country since the spring of 2015. According to the United Nations, the counry is facing the world’s most acute food crisis.