DUBAI: Yemen’s government told the United Nations Wednesday it would agree to a truce to end more than three months of fighting provided key “guarantees” were met, spokesman Rajeh Badi said.

“The Yemeni authorities have informed the Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon of its agreement to implement a truce in the coming days,” Badi told Reuters by phone from the government’s seat of exile in Saudi Arabia.

Yemen’s President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi, the spokesman said, had “set guarantees for the success of the truce.”

These included the release of prisoners by the Houthi movement, including the loyalist defense minister, and the Houthis’ withdrawal from four southern and eastern provinces where they are fighting local militias.

Saudi Arabia and an Arab coalition have been bombing the Iran-allied Houthis and their allies in Yemen’s army in an effort to restore Hadi and back armed opponents of the Houthis.

There was no immediate comment from the Houthi movement, which views its takeover of the capital Sanaa last September, and of much of the country since, as a revolution against a corrupt government backed by the West.

The Houthis have not yet accepted a U.N. Security Council resolution passed in April which recognizes Hadi as the legitimate president and calls on them to quit seized land.

Aid agencies say the fighting and a near-blockade imposed by an alliance of Arab states aimed at weapons deliveries to the Houthis has caused a humanitarian catastrophe, with most people needing some kind of aid.

More than 3,000 people have been killed in the conflict and over a million displaced, and the U.N. has been urgently pushing for a pause to help impoverished people.

“We’re optimistic [the Houthis] will agree, because this will guarantee the sending of aid to Yemenis,” Badi said.

Yemen is running critically short of imported food and fuel as war has cut internal supply lines, and the United Nations says more than 80 percent of its 25 million people need some form of emergency aid.

Before Saudi Arabia intervened in March to try to restore Yemen’s president to power and roll back the Houthis, Yemen imported more than 90 percent of its food, mostly by sea.

Since then, many shipping companies have pulled out. Those still willing to bring cargoes face incalculable delays and mandatory searches by coalition warships hunting for arms bound for the Houthis.

According to a humanitarian aid assessment compiled by the U.S. Navy and obtained by Reuters, just 42 ships reached Yemen with goods in June compared with 100 in March. Further data was not available. Before the crisis, the number of ships making calls to Yemen’s major southern port of Aden alone averaged over 1,000 annually in recent years.

The 15-page report, which bears the insignia of the U.S. Navy’s Central Command and the Saudi flag, has been circulated among coalition militaries and humanitarian agencies which send in aid with the Saudi alliance’s approval. The report said imports into embattled Aden’s terminals had halted almost completely, with port calls by cargo, container ships and fuel tankers down over 75 percent between January and June versus the same period last year.