Medical sources say missile strike on Taiz-Aden road killed civilians
Yemen Herald News 
TAIZ, Yemen — A missile struck a passenger bus on the Hayjat al-Abd road linking Taiz and Aden on Saturday, killing civilians, medical and local sources said.
Accounts of the toll differ, and no count from a body independent of the warring parties has been published.
Local and medical sources cited by the newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat put the dead at four and the wounded at nine, and reported property damage at the site.
Yemen’s state news agency, Saba, gave the same figures in an account carried by Al Jazeera. Saba said a ballistic missile was fired toward the road, hitting a bus carrying passengers and a medium cargo truck.
A medical source in the government-held city of Taiz gave a higher count to Agence France-Presse, saying six civilians travelling by bus were killed and seven wounded.
Yemen Herald could not reconcile the two sets of figures.
Both accounts attribute the fire to the Houthi movement. The group has not commented on the strike, and has not said whether it fired on the road.
The Hayjat al-Abd road runs south of Taiz city. It is one of the main links between Taiz and Aden, the seat of Yemen’s internationally recognised government.
The strike came on the third day of fighting across western Taiz and southern Hodeidah governorates.
Fighting between government forces and the Houthis killed more than 60 people on Saturday, AFP reported, citing sources on both sides.
Three Yemeni military sources told the agency that 26 government troops were killed. Medical and military sources on the Houthi side put their own dead at 31 fighters.
Neither figure has been confirmed by an independent body. Each rests on sources aligned with the side reporting it.
The Houthis launched a ground offensive on Thursday across the western coast, southern Hodeidah and western Taiz, Asharq Al-Awsat reported, citing military sources.
The group fired more than 12 ballistic missiles at rural areas in the two governorates that day, the newspaper said. Local sources told it the missiles were launched from Ibb governorate and from areas east and north of Taiz.
The Thursday assault began in the early hours and developed into direct clashes and artillery exchanges that lasted for hours, military sources told Asharq Al-Awsat.
The group fired hundreds of artillery and mortar rounds and used drones during the assault, the sources said. The fighting spread to hills overlooking the al-Aqma area in Mawza district.
Government forces said they shot down three Houthi drones over subdistricts in Jabal Habashi district as the fighting continued.
Government forces counterattacked over the following days. The armed forces media centre said on Friday evening that combat aircraft had carried out more than 15 strikes on Houthi positions, gatherings and vehicles on the western coast fronts.
It was the first time the army said it had used combat aircraft on those fronts in the current fighting, according to Asharq Al-Awsat.
Government forces said by the end of Saturday that they had retaken Hays district in Hodeidah, AFP reported.
In western Taiz, they recaptured al-Khazan hill in Jabal Habashi district on Friday, a military source told Asharq Al-Awsat.
In southeastern Taiz, government forces seized al-Wathra and Saeed Taha hills in the al-Mafalis area, along with the Dheiban, al-Khudaira and al-Najdain hills, a military source said.
National resistance units, supported by the Giants Brigades, counterattacked south of al-Jarrahi district in southern Hodeidah on Saturday morning, the resistance’s military media office said.
The Houthi movement has not confirmed losing ground in either district. It disputes government accounts of its battlefield losses.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said about 1,790 families were displaced over two days as the fighting spread in Taiz.
Yemen’s Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation asked international organisations and donors to intervene for displaced and affected families in Taiz and Hodeidah.
The ministry said needs were growing for shelter, food, medicine, water and medical services, and called for field hospitals to be set up to receive the wounded.
Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council, reviewed the fighting with field commanders and warned on Friday evening of its consequences, according to a statement from the office of the supreme commander of the armed forces.
Al-Alimi held the Houthis responsible for the humanitarian effects of the escalation, including the displacement of hundreds of families.
He said government forces would not allow what he described as Iran’s objective of controlling the Bab al-Mandab Strait. The Houthi movement rejects being characterised as an Iranian instrument.
The fighting follows the collapse in July of a truce that had held in varying form since 2022, AFP reported.
Aid agencies were already working against a shortfall. The UN’s 2026 humanitarian response plan for Yemen seeks $2.16 billion to reach 12 million people, against more than 22 million assessed as in need.
The plan records 18.3 million people as acutely food insecure and more than 2.2 million children under five as acutely malnourished, of whom 516,157 are severely malnourished.
Taiz has been divided by front lines since 2015, and positions in the governorate’s west have changed hands repeatedly.
Mokha and its port were hit by Houthi missile and drone attacks in August, disrupting port traffic, Asharq Al-Awsat reported.
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