The press service of the UN envoy to Yemen said that a Yemeni Airlines plane today brought dozens of passengers from Sanaa to Cairo on the first commercial flight between the two capitals since 2016 as part of the truce in Yemen. He pointed out that “77 people boarded the plane, which took off in the morning from an airport closed to commercial flights for almost six years, and the agency photographer said that journalists were not allowed into the airport.”

This is the seventh commercial flight departing from the capital Sana’a since the start of the truce on April 2 last year. The remaining six flights were between Sanaa and Amman in Jordan, and most of them were carrying Yemeni patients. The armistice agreement was supposed to allow two commercial flights a week from Sana’a, but disputes over the sourcing of passports reduced those flights, a rare glimmer of hope in a conflict after a devastating war. As the truce drew to a close, Washington on Tuesday warned of “difficulties” facing negotiations to extend it.