YEMEN’S warring parties failed to operate a planned first commercial flight in six years from the Houthi-held capital today in a blow to an already fragile truce in the country’s grinding conflict.

The flight to Amman in Jordan had been planned as part of the UN-brokered 60-day truce that the internationally recognised government and the Houthi rebels struck earlier this month.

The truce, which went into effect on April 2, is the first nationwide ceasefire in Yemen in six years. It came amid concerted international and regional efforts to find a settlement to the conflict that has devastated the Arab world’s poorest country and pushed it to the brink of famine.

Yemen’s brutal civil war erupted in 2014, when the Iranian-backed Houthis led a popular movement against the government of Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and seized the capital, Sanaa, forcing him to flee to Saudi Arabia.

A Saudi-led coalition, armed by Britain and the United States, entered the war in early 2015 to try restore the government to power.

In recent years the conflict has become a regional proxy war that has killed more than 150,000 people, including over 14,500 civilians, and has also created one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.

As part of the truce, the two sides agreed to operate two commercial flights a week to and from Sanaa to Jordan and Egypt. Sanaa is blockaded by the Saudi-led coalition.

However, both sides failed to operate the first flight, trading blame for the failure. 

The Houthis accused the Saudis of failing to issue needed permits for the flight, while Moammar al-Iryani, the Saudi-backed government’s information minister, said the Houthis had not stuck to the agreement by providing passengers with passports issued by the rebels.

He said the government allowed the travel of 104 passengers on the Sanaa-Amman flight but the Houthis insisted on adding 60 more passengers “with unreliable passports.” The government announced in March 2017 that it would not recognise documents issued by the rebels.

A spokesman for the Houthis did not respond to a request for comment.