HOUTHI TERMS, NOT SA'UDI:

Hopes for progress at UN talks on ending the war in Yemen have been overshadowed by an attack by Houthi rebels that killed scores of troops of the Saudi-led coalition, including two senior commanders, just hours before a planned ceasefire.

Representatives of the Yemeni government and the Houthis are scheduled to meet in Switzerland on Tuesday in what has been billed as a serious and perhaps a last-ditch effort to end a conflict that has claimed nearly 6,000 lives and represents a massive humanitarian disaster in the Arab world's poorest country.

But confidence about a truce to mark the negotiations was dented on Monday by an attack on the headquarters of the Arab forces backing the Yemeni president, Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, whose Houthi enemies are fighting alongside forces loyal to the former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh.

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