Yemen’s Houthi movement said it is unilaterally halting operations in the Red Sea for two weeks to support peace efforts, days after Saudi Arabia suspended oil exports through a strategic Red Sea channel following attacks on crude tankers last week.

Yemen - where a Saudi-led coalition has been battling the  Houthi movement in a three-year-old war - lies on one of the world’s most important trade routes for oil tankers, the Bab al-Mandeb strait.

“The unilateral halt in naval military operations will be for a limited time period and could be extended and include all fronts if this move is reciprocated by the leadership of the coalition,” the leader of the Houthi supreme revolutionary committee, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, said in a statement.

A statement from the Houthi-controlled defense ministry said later that the movement was halting naval operations for two weeks, starting at midnight (2000 GMT) on Aug. 1.

“We welcome any initiative to spare bloodshed and stop aggression against Yemen,” the statement published on the state news agency SABA said, quoting a defense ministry official.

The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced  on March 25 that the Saudi-led war had left some 600,000 civilians dead and injured since March 2015.

The United Nations says a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.

A high-ranking UN aid official has warned against the “catastrophic” living conditions in Yemen, stating that there is a growing risk of famine and cholera there.

“The conflict has escalated since November, driving an estimated 100,000 people from their homes,” John Ging, UN director of aid operations, told the UN Security Council on February 27.