The American diplomat tasked with helping to end the grinding civil war in Yemen – which has claimed close to 400,000 lives and left the majority of the country’s people dependent on humanitarian aid for survival – lamented the end of a six-month ceasefire without a truce agreement to replace it. U.S. Special Envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking told reporters on a State Department telephone briefing that he feared the failure to reach a new peace agreement would bring a “return to war.” Lenderking said that if the fighting between Yemen’s Saudi Arabian-backed central government and the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who hold a huge swath of the Arabian nation, does resume, it will “bring nothing but casualties and destruction on Yemen and will create further confusion as to where this conflict is headed.” (https://news.yahoo.com/u-envoy-fears-return-war-132600310.html) The Houthis, whom Lenderking blamed for the failure of the negotiations, made it clear to CBS News that the fighting was indeed likely to resume, as they warned of an imminent “return to military operations.”