SANAA,(Xinhua)

A woman and a girl were killed on Sunday when artillery shelling hit residential homes in the south of Yemen's Red Sea port city of Hodeidah, medics told Xinhua.

Three other women were wounded in the district of al-Hawak during the exchange of fire between the government forces and the Houthi rebels, they said.

Hodeidah has seen a shaky cease-fire between the government and the Houthi rebels since both sides reached a UN-sponsored truce agreement in Stockholm in December 2018.

The port city is under the control of the Houthi rebels, while the government forces have advanced to the southern districts.

Yemen has been mired in civil war since late 2014, when the Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized control of much of the country's north and forced the internationally-recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa.