TEHRAN – The Iranian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Saturday welcoming the extension of a UN-brokered truce between warring sides in Yemen for another two months, reaffirming Tehran’s support for a political settlement of the eight-year crisis. 

Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh expressed hope that the truce would lay the ground for a full lifting of the blockade on Yemen, establishment of a lasting ceasefire and a political solution to the country’s crisis.

"Based on its strategic approach and principled policies, the Islamic Republic of Iran has always considered the solution to the Yemeni crisis to be a political one and has used all its capacity to promote fair peace based on the realities [on the ground] in Yemen," Khatibzadeh insisted, according to Press TV.

In a statement on Thursday, UN special envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg announced that the parties to the Yemen conflict have agreed to the United Nations' proposal to renew the current truce for two additional months.

The initial two-month truce began on April 2 and was set to expire on June 2. 

“I would like to announce that the parties to the conflict have agreed to the United Nations’ proposal to renew the current truce in Yemen for two additional months,” Grundberg said, Al Jazeera reported.

The war on Yemen, which started in March 2015 under the leadership of Saudi Arabia, has caused indescribable grief and suffering for the poor Yemeni people. 

“The announcement of the truce extension today (Thursday) shows a serious commitment from all parties to end the senseless suffering of millions of Yemenis,” the Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) Yemen Country Director, Erin Hutchinson, said in a statement after Grundberg’s announcement. “The last two months have shown that peaceful solutions to the conflict are a real option.”

As part of the truce deal that went into effect on April 2, the warring  sides had agreed to stop all military operations inside Yemen and across its borders, operate two commercial flights a week from Houthi-controlled Sanaa to Jordan and Egypt, allow 18 fuel vessels into the port of Houthi-controlled Hodeidah, and open the roads in Taiz and other governorates.

According to the NRC, the number of civilians killed and injured in Yemen dropped by more than 50 percent in the first month of the truce.

Another major success of the truce was the resumption of commercial flights from Sanaa Airport on April 16, the first in six years. The Saudi-led war had banned commercial flights from using the airport.