Al Jazeera reports Houthi capture of al-Turbah cut Taiz’s last main road as prices climb
Yemen Herald News 
TAIZ, Yemen — Houthi forces captured the town of al-Turbah on 4 October, cutting the last main road between Taiz city and other government-held areas, Al Jazeera reported.
Yemen’s third most populous city now depends on secondary routes through rural districts.
About 2.8 million people live in the government-held parts of Taiz governorate, according to Nabil Jamil, director-general of the governorate’s planning and development office.
Jamil said the restrictions also affect most of the secondary roads connecting those districts.
The governorate as a whole has about 4.5 million residents, Al Jazeera reported, making it Yemen’s most populous.
Al-Monitor put the population of Taiz city itself at about 1 million.
Fuel shortages came first.
The black-market price of a 20-litre container of petrol rose from 30,000 Yemeni riyals to 90,000 riyals, Al Jazeera reported.
That is about 58 dollars, against roughly 19 dollars before the increase.
Prices of vegetables and fruit have doubled, said Wafiq Saleh, a journalist who covers economic affairs in the city.
Saleh said wheat and flour prices had also risen noticeably. He gave no figures.
Al Arabiya reported on 13 October that the cost of fuel, water, food and medicine had increased and that deliveries of essential supplies were restricted.
Accounts differ on how the city came to be cut off.
Al Jazeera reported on 4 October that government forces had closed the main roads into Taiz city over fears of Houthi infiltration.
Security sources told the broadcaster that the eastern crossing shut after attempted Houthi incursions.
Much of the city’s food had entered through that crossing.
The Houthis agreed to reopen it in 2024 under domestic and international pressure.
The group took full control of the Red Sea port city of Mocha and the district of Dhubab during an offensive in early September, Al Jazeera reported.
Those areas sit on supply routes into Taiz and near the Bab al-Mandab strait.
Ibrahim Jalal, a senior researcher and policy adviser, said the Houthis were seeking to secure their Red Sea gains as far as Bab al-Mandab and to increase pressure on Lahj, Aden and much of the south.
Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council, announced the start of an offensive to regain lost territory on 4 October.
Majed al-Nuzaili, a Yemeni military spokesman, said government forces had carried out dozens of air, drone, artillery, missile and sniper operations.
He claimed hundreds of Houthi casualties. Al Jazeera said it could not verify the figure.
Government forces said they captured several areas, including a fort in Samaa, with tribesmen taking part in that advance.
The Taiz military command said it repelled Houthi attacks on Jabal Han and Hazran, west of the city.
Jabal Han is a mountain overlooking Taiz from the west.
Control of it would allow the Houthis to target people and supplies entering from the southwest, according to Saeed Thabet, head of Al Jazeera’s Yemen bureau.
Observers describe the battle for Taiz as a stalemate, Al Jazeera reported.
Al Jazeera’s Mohammed al-Qadi reported dozens of government airstrikes on Houthi positions across the governorate.
Face-to-face fighting has reached villages and mountain areas on the outskirts of Taiz city.
The Institute for the Study of War reported heavy clashes near al-Dhabab, on the city’s southwestern outskirts, on 12 and 13 October.
Fighting was also concentrated at al-Shaqab, southeast of the city, the institute said.
Nearly 200,000 people have been displaced in Yemen since early September, most of them from Taiz governorate, according to Yemen’s Executive Unit for IDP Camps Management.
Jamil gave a similar figure for recent displacement from the coast and rural Taiz.
A shell hit a residential area in Dhubab, killing a 14-day-old infant, local authorities said.
The Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms said Houthi forces fired 180 shells toward residential neighbourhoods in the governorate over 24 hours, in a statement issued on 13 October.
The network named Bir Basha, al-Manakh, Zaid al-Mushki, al-Jamia and al-Shamasi among the areas hit.
Yemen Herald could not independently confirm the count.
Local authorities in Taiz wrote to the United Nations asking for assistance, Jamil said.
“We are still waiting for a response or intervention on the ground,” he said.
Nabil Sharyan, a lawyer who heads the Justice for Rights and Development Organization, called on the international community, rights groups and aid agencies to act.
UNHCR and the World Health Organization have warned that the fighting threatens Yemen’s health system, Al Jazeera reported.
Taiz was besieged by Houthi forces from 2015.
Pro-government forces broke that blockade in 2016 after recapturing territory south of the city.
The city has been contested since the Houthis took Sanaa in September 2014, and government forces repelled repeated assaults between 2015 and 2022.
Yemen’s humanitarian response plan for 2026, published in March, counted more than 22 million people in need of assistance.
The plan recorded 18.3 million people as acutely food insecure and 5.2 million as internally displaced.
It counted more than 2.2 million children under five with acute malnutrition, 516,157 of them severe.
The plan sought 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people.
Al Jazeera said the renewed siege was less than a week old when it reported from the city on 10 October.
About the Author
