RIMBO, Sweden (AP) — In another positive development coming out of Yemen peace talks underway in Sweden, a member of the Yemeni government delegation said Wednesday that the next round of negotiations between the country's warring sides could take place as early as January.
Meanwhile, an international group tracking Yemen's civil war reported that the conflict has killed more than 60,000 people, both combatants and civilians, since 2016.
The somber figure — six times higher than the U.N. figure of 10,000 civilian deaths — adds to the urgency to find a resolution for the four-year bloodletting that has also left millions of people facing hunger.
In Sweden, Marwan Damaj, the culture minister in Yemen's internationally recognized government, said the venue and the exact timing for the next round of U.N.-sponsored talks are still being considered.
Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels and the government side, supported by a Saudi-led coalition, are to wrap up the current round of U.N.-sponsored negotiations underway in the town of Rimbo, north of Stockholm, on Thursday.
"There has been discussion of another round soon, there are arrangements and such," he said. "It's been suggested that they take place in January, next month after the New Year holiday, but this not fully determined yet, it's only preliminary."
Both sides are currently discussing the U.N. envoy's proposals for the embattled port city of Hodeida and the airport in Sanaa, Yemen's capital, he said.
The government of Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi wants the rebels to withdraw from Hodeida, after which the sides could discuss other steps, including allowing U.N. oversight and setting up a local, pre-war administration of the city, Damaj said.
A draft document obtained by The Associated Press earlier this week showed an initial 16-point proposal to stop all fighting and have all troops withdraw to the city limits and later from the surrounding province, also called Hodeida.
Rebel delegation member Gamal Amer said Tuesday both sides are discussing initial draft proposals for Hodeida. He added that an agreement on Hodeida is expected to be reached before the next round of talks, Amer said without elaborating.
U.N. special envoy Martin Griffiths has said he wants to "take Hodeida out of the war," in hopes that international aid delivers can be restored through the port and the country can avert famine.
About 70 percent of food aid and other imports are shipped through Hodeida's port, and reducing restrictions on aid organizations and fuel imports are vitally needed.
The war has made Yemen the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with 22 of its 29 million people in need of aid, according to the United Nations. The two sides have for months been locked in a stalemated fight over Hodeida.
The mounting humanitarian needs, and outrage over the killing of Saudi writer Jamal Khashoggi, have galvanized international support for ending the war. The United States, a backer for the Saudis, has called for a cease-fire and reduced some of its logistical aid for the Saudi-led coalition.
The new death toll figure of 60,000 for Yemen came from the U.S.-based Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, or ACLED, which said in a report Tuesday that more than 28,000 people — again both civilians and combatants — were killed in the first 11 months of 2018, an increase of 68 percent from 2017. More than 3,000 were killed in November, the deadliest month since ACLED started collecting data.
The group said 37 percent of the total number of civilians killed in Yemen in 2018 died in Hodeida.
The U.S.-based group said that it recorded more than 3,000 attacks on civilians, killing some 6,500, but that this figure does not include civilians killed in ground battles between the various sides.
ACLED's figures also do not include the last few months of 2014, when Yemen's Houthi rebels captured Sanaa and much of the country's north, nor the casualties in 2015, when the Saudi-led coalition joined the war on the side of Hadi's government.
ACLED bases its figures on press reports of each incident of violence in the war.
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Magdy reported from Cairo.
