This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Fierce new fighting and airstrikes in Yemen are extinguishing hope of rescuing a fragile UN-backed de-escalation deal designed to pave the way for wider peace talks in the four-year-old civil war.

Clashes between Houthi rebels and Saudi-led coalition forces in the port city of Hodeidah broke out on Wednesday despite what the UN said had been a successful implementation of a Houthi withdrawal deal earlier in the week.

On Thursday, coalition airstrikes on a residential area of the Houthi-controlled capital, Sana’a, left at least six people dead, including four children, and injured at least 41, the Houthi health ministry said, with the death toll expected to rise.

Yemen: Houthis begin Hodeidah port pullout Read more

A picture of a shaken toddler in the arms of a security officer was widely shared on social media. Locals said her parents and three siblings had been killed.

Amal Al Yarisi (@AmalAlYarisi) Heart goes out to this little beautiful girl. She is the only survivor after the airstrike hit her house and killed all her family in #Sanna this early morning. #ForgottenYemen pic.twitter.com/7Eyjj47NF0

Sana’a resident Qassim al-Mahdi sent the Guardian pictures of people searching for survivors in the dust and rubble of levelled houses. Several plumes of grey smoke rose above al-Raqas neighbourhood.

Houthi-run Masirah TV said 11 strikes hit the capital on Thursday and 19 were conducted across rebel-held Yemen in total. In a statement, the coalition said an operation had been launched with the aim of “neutralising the ability of the Houthi militia to carry out acts of aggression.”.

The fresh violence comes despite the Houthi withdrawal from Hodeidah and two other vital Red Sea ports, which began on Saturday, viewed as an important first step in a complex de-escalation plan agreed at peace talks in Sweden last December.

However, the rebel move was greeted with great scepticism by coalition forces fighting to restore Yemen’s government, who accused the Houthis of putting fighters in civilian coast guard and police uniforms in order to retain control of the ports, through which 70% of Yemen’s food, fuel and aid flow.

The Houthi withdrawal in Hodeidah was also undermined by rebel claims of responsibility for drone attacks earlier in the week which temporarily shut down a key oil pipeline in neighbouring Saudi Arabia.

Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdul Salam said on Twitter the drone strikes were a response to the “genocide” and “aggression” of the bloody air war the western-backed coalition has led in Yemen since March 2015.

The attack, along with claims from Saudi Arabia and the allied United Arab Emirates that their oil tankers in the Red Sea had been damaged in an act of Houthi sabotage, has sent tensions skyrocketing between Riyadh and regional rival Iran, which backs the Houthis in Yemen’s complex war.

“The terrorist acts, ordered by the regime in Tehran, and carried out by the Houthis, are tightening the noose around the ongoing political efforts,” Saudi Arabia’s deputy defence minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, said on Thursday.

Martin Griffiths, the UN’s special envoy to Yemen, warned at a security council meeting in New York on Wednesday that the new fighting threatens to wipe out the progress made in implementing last year’s Stockholm Agreement.

The Houthis had been “fully compliant throughout the withdrawal and had been fully cooperative” in the Hodeidah redeployment and a UN monitoring mission is ready to take over management of the ports, he told delegates.

While Hodeidah and Sanaa have remained relatively calm over the last few months, heavy fighting in southern Dhale governorate has killed at least 27 civilians and displaced around 10,000 people.

At least 70,000 people have been killed in Yemen’s war to date, which has also sparked the biggest cholera outbreak in modern history and left half of the country’s 28 million-strong population on the brink of famine.

Western governments, including the UK and US, have faced repeated criticism from rights groups for supplying the Saudi-led coalition with arms and logistical support for airstrikes which have targeted weddings, funerals and medical facilities in the past.