UN council to vote on monitors for truce at key Yemen port

The U.N. Security Council called a vote for Friday on a resolution that would authorize the use of U.N. monitors to observe the implementation of a cease-fire in Yemen's important port of Hodeida and the withdrawal of rival forces from that area.

Passage could offer a potential breakthrough in the four-year civil war that has brought the Arab world's poorest country to the brink of starvation.

The U.N. envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, has urged rapid deployment of U.N. monitors as "an essential part of the confidence" needed to help implement the Dec. 13 cease-fire agreement between Yemen's government and Houthi Shiite rebels. The pact also calls for the "phased but rapid mutual withdrawals" of fighters from Hodeida as well as its main docks and two others in the province.

The fragile cease-fire has halted months of heavy fighting in Hodeida, which handles 70 percent of the food and humanitarian aid imported into Yemen. But the Saudi-led coalition backing the government bombed an air base in the rebel-held capital of Sanaa on Wednesday, and Yemeni officials have reported sporadic artillery and automatic weapons fire.