Saudi Arabia proposed on Thursday that the United Nations reopen and run the international airport in Yemen’s capital, which has been closed for a year because of a Saudi blockade to pressure the Houthi rebel movement.

The Saudi proposal, made by a spokesman for the military coalition that has been bombing the rebels in a war that began more than two years ago, appeared to take the United Nations by surprise.

It came a day after international aid groups, vexed at what they called obstacles created by the Saudis that are hindering efforts to send relief supplies to Yemen, said that more civilians had died from deprivations attributable to Saudi restrictions on Yemeni airspace than from military airstrikes.

“Denial of access to travel has condemned thousands of Yemenis with survivable illnesses to death,” Mutasim Hamdan, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s country director in Yemen, said in a statement. “Without access to safe commercial travel, Yemenis are left with no way to access critical medical care.”