In Yemen's besieged Taiz, families are taking shelter as Houthi forces close in, Reuters reported from the city. Taiz has been on the frontline between the Houthis and the government since the war's first days, and is now the last major urban stronghold of anti-Houthi forces in the southern highland area of Yemen.
Resident Wathiq Mahyoub said prices were rising, fuel was running short and garbage was piling up on the streets. "The siege is suffocating. It's strangling the citizens," Mahyoub told Reuters. "The Houthis refused to open the crossing for us, even to dump the rubbish."
Speaking to reporters in Geneva, Zoe Brennan, spokesperson for the UN migration agency, said 233,077 people have been displaced so far in the latest conflict, 121,530 of them in Taiz. Ahmed al-Jalal, director of the Executive Unit for the Management of Displaced Persons' Camps in Taiz governorate, said there are no camps equipped to receive the families, with some living in large unfinished buildings, shops and buildings unfit for living, with no essentials.
World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jašarević said 12 hospitals had about four days of fuel while there was a shortage of oxygen and medicines. "Taiz is being cut off, and its hospitals are running out of supplies as fighting has reached urban districts where the main referral hospitals stand," he said. "Unfortunately, the road closures are blocking the resupply."
The New York Post independently reported that the Houthis had encircled the city and cut off most supply routes from government-held areas, and that the Taiz provincial health office warned of a "huge catastrophe" as hospitals face a diesel shortage and fighting cuts off access to medical supplies.
War broke out in Yemen in 2014 when the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa, driving the government south to Aden. A Saudi-led military intervention the following year led to a bloody stalemate before a 2022 truce that held until this year. Last week, government forces launched a campaign to recapture areas controlled by the Houthis, recovering ground near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key shipping artery.