Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said on Saturday that Riyadh was still committed to back-channel peace talks with Yemen's Houthi rebels, despite a recent increase in violence in the five-year conflict. 

Yemen has been mired in fighting since the Iran-backed Houthi movement ousted the government of President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi from the capital in late 2014. 

A Saudi-led military coalition intervened in 2015 to try to restore him to power. The conflict is widely seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and its regional foe, Shiite Muslim Iran. 

The United Nations has been trying to re-launch political negotiations to end the war and, separately, Riyadh has been holding informal talks with the Houthis since late September about de-escalation.

"We have a back channel and it's not yet ready to move to the highest level," Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud told the Munich Security Conference.

"It's making progress. We have seen some deterioration recently, but we are committed to moving it forward," he added, referring to a recent rise in military activity by the Iran-backed rebels.

After a lull in hostilities in recent months on many fronts, violence has escalated at a frontline east of Yemen's Houthi-held capital Sanaa after a January 19 missile attack on a government military camp that killed more than 100 people.

Prince Faisal said Saudi would continue to respond to attacks, but that the recent Houthi assaults were not yet at the point that they were endangering the back-channel talks.

Civilians killed in Saudi-UAE-led air raids, another Saudi fighter jet crashes

Air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen have caused heavy civilian casualties throughout the war. UN human rights experts have stressed that some of the strikes could amount to war crimes. 

The latest such attack came on Saturday when Houthi rebels claimed that an airstrike carried out by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates killed over 30 civilians in Yemen's al-Jawf province. 

United Nations humanitarian chief for the war-torn country has called the air raids "shocking."

"Preliminary field reports indicate that... as many as 31 civilians were killed and 12 others injured in strikes that hit al-Hayjah area of al-Maslub district in al-Jawf governorate," read a statement from the office of the UN resident coordinator and humanitarian coordinator for Yemen. 

The air raids in the mountainous northern province came hours after Houthis claimed they shot down another Saudi-led coalition fighter jet in the same area with an advanced anti-aircraft system.

Col. Turki al-Maliki, a spokesman for the coalition, said the plane was investigating "possible collateral damage" from a rescue operation in the area after the downing of the Tornado warplane late Friday.

The Houthis claimed responsibility for the shooting down of the Tornado warplane.

(With input from agencies)