Long-delayed peace talks for Yemen are expected to finally open in Geneva in mid-December, the British ambassador to the United Nations said Wednesday.

Yemen forces backed by air power from a Saudi-led coalition have been battling Huthi Shiite rebels who captured the capital Sanaa over a year ago.

British Ambassador Matthew Rycroft told reporters that the UN-brokered talks "will probably happen in Geneva in the middle of the month."

"We strongly support those because that is the route to ending the conflict," he said.

More than 5,700 people have been killed in Yemen since the Saudi-led air campaign began in March, according to the United Nations.

The conflict took a worrisome turn this week when Al-Qaeda fighters battled pro-government forces in Jaar in southern Yemen, briefly taking control of the town.

Rycroft said the threat from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) highlighted the need to find an urgent resolution to the Yemen crisis.

UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed has been holding talks for weeks with all sides to try to launch peace talks, but no date has been announced for the formal negotiations.

An attempt in June to bring the Yemeni parties together at a negotiating table failed.

Yemen's humanitarian crisis has been identified by the United Nations as one of the world's worst, with 80 percent of the country's population on the brink of famine.

Rocket fire kills army commander in Libya's Benghazi
Benghazi, Libya (AFP) Dec 2, 2015 - Rocket fire Wednesday killed a commander and wounded five other soldiers of the armed forces loyal to Libya's internationally recognised government in the coastal city of Benghazi, a military source said.

Colonel Ali al-Themen was killed in the eastern district of Sidi Faraj as his forces advanced on positions held by "extremist groups", Nasser el-Hassi, spokesman for the Benina air base south of Benghazi, was quoted as saying by the Lana news agency.

The attack came a day after anti-government armed groups launched a barrage of 28 rockets at Benina, hitting nearby homes and causing dozens of civilian casualties, according to the army.

Medics said one person was killed and three wounded when rockets on Tuesday also struck two residential districts of Benghazi.

Pro-government forces have fought an array of armed factions notably Islamists, for control of Libya's second city for the past 18 months.

Libya descended into chaos after the October 2011 ouster and killing of longtime dictator Moamer Kadhafi, with two governments vying for power and armed groups battling over its vast energy resources.

'Around 100' US special ops forces to deploy to Iraq to combat IS
Washington (AFP) Dec 2, 2015 - The United States is sending about 100 commandos to Iraq to fight Islamic State jihadists in that country and across the border in Syria, a US military spokesman said Wednesday.

"Probably around 100, maybe a little bit less," Colonel Steve Warren said. "In fact, really fewer actual trigger-pullers, if you will ... It's a very small number, a double-digit number."

Warren's comments came the day after Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced additional special forces troops would join the fight against the IS group, though the Pentagon chief did not give details on the size of the deployment.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi reacted to Carter's announcement by saying Iraq does not need foreign ground troops to defeat the IS group, but he did not directly reject the deployment and US officials downplayed his remarks.

"We've been talking with the prime minister about this for weeks," Warren said.

The specially trained commandos will be involved in direct combat against IS jihadists, but the Pentagon insists their mission doesn't contradict a White House pledge to avoid US "boots on the ground" and did not constitute "mission creep" in which the United States gets incrementally bogged down in a ground war against the IS group.

This is not "ground combat with armor and artillery and combined armed operations and death and destruction everywhere you look," Warren said.

"These are raids, these are a small number of highly skilled commandos conducting very precise, very limited operations ... so there is a difference."

The United States already has about 3,500 troops in Iraq, but their mission is to "train and advise" local forces.