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SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Gunmen shot and killed the head of one of the World Food Program’s offices in Yemen on Friday, the humanitarian organization said.

In a statement, the program said that Moayad Hameidi, a Jordanian, was shot by gunmen not long after he arrived in the country to assume the role as head of its office in the city of Taiz. It added he died not long after reaching a hospital.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the attack.

This is a locator map for Yemen with its capital, Sanaa. (AP Photo)

A U.N. envoy says sporadic armed clashes between Yemen’s Houthi rebels and government forces are straining peace efforts, and the rivals are now also battling over revenue from ports, trade, banking and natural resources.

Yemen’s warring sides have exchanged 64 bodies of their fallen, the latest in reconciliation efforts amid the country’s yearslong conflict.

FILE - Migrants and refugees from Africa sailing adrift on an overcrowded rubber boat, receive life jackets from aid workers of the Spanish NGO Aita Mary in the Mediterranean Sea, about 103 miles (165 km) from Libya coast, on Jan. 28, 2022. Last year was the deadliest for migrants in the Middle East and North Africa since 2017, the United Nations said Tuesday, June 13, 2023. About 3,800 people died on migrants’ routes within and from the region, according to data released by the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project. (AP Photo/Pau de la Calle, File)

The U.N. migration agency says last year was the deadliest for migrants in the Middle East and North Africa since 2017.

Safer tanker is seen on Monday, June 12, 2023, off the coast of Yemen. Safer has posed an environmental threat since 2015, as it decayed and threatened to spill its contents of 1.14 million barrels into the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. In May, the United Nations announced that the first step of the ship's salvage process had begun, with the arrival of a ship that would remove atmospheric oxygen from the ship's oil chambers. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)

CAIRO (AP) — The United Nations has secured insurance coverage to start a ship-to-ship transfer of 1.1 million barrels of crude from a rusting tanker moored off the coast of war-torn Yemen — oil that could cause a major environmental disaster.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, also known by its acronym AQAP, is active in several regions in Yemen. It is believed to be one of the more dangerous branches of the al-Qaida terror network. Years of conflict have allowed the group to maintain a presence in several areas around the country.

Taiz, the country’s third-largest city, has been under a siege by the Houthi rebels since 2016, as part of the country’s brutal civil war. The blockade has severely restricted freedom of movement and impeded the flow of essential goods, medicine and humanitarian aid to the city’s residents.

The war began in 2014, when the Houthis seized Sanaa and much of northern Yemen and forced the government into exile. A Saudi-led coalition entered the war in early 2015 to try restore the internationally recognized government to power.

The conflict has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises and over the years turned into a regional proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. More than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, have been killed.

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