UN agency says 121,530 displaced in Taiz as fighting drives families into the city
Yemen Herald News 
TAIZ, Yemen — Fighting around Taiz city has driven thousands of families into its centre, the UN migration agency and Reuters reported this week, as Houthi forces tightened their encirclement.
Yemeni sources reported an escalation between government forces and the Houthis on the city’s outskirts and in Sabr al-Mawadim district to the south.
They said the Houthis had taken Jabal Han, a mountain west of the city, after a day of fighting. The sources were not named.
Yemen Herald found no origin for the Jabal Han claim independent of those sources, and government forces have given a different account of the fighting there. The displacement itself is documented separately by the UN migration agency and by Reuters reporting from the city.
Al Jazeera reported on 4 October that Jabal Han was a focus of the fighting and that government forces said they had repelled Houthi attacks there. It said it could not verify claims made by either side.
Saeed Thabet, head of Al Jazeera’s Yemen bureau, said Houthi control of the mountain would let them strike people and supplies entering Taiz from the south-west.
Majed al-Nuzaili, a Yemeni military spokesman, reported hundreds of Houthi casualties in the fighting, Al Jazeera said. It could not verify that account either.
The sources also said airstrikes had targeted Houthi positions and reinforcements. They gave no account of the losses.
Villages in Sabr al-Mawadim have seen similar displacement, the sources said.
Aid agencies have put figures on the movement of people. Zoe Brennan, a spokeswoman for the UN migration agency, said 233,077 people had been displaced in the latest round of conflict, 121,530 of them in Taiz, Reuters reported on 16 October.
Ahmed al-Jalal, who directs the displaced persons’ camps executive unit in al-Muzaffar district, said no camp was equipped to take the families arriving. Some were sheltering in unfinished buildings and shops, and in buildings unfit to live in.
Taiz city has a population of almost 600,000, according to Reuters.
Houthi forces have encircled the city by cutting the main road south to Aden, the agency reported. Taiz is the last large urban stronghold of anti-Houthi forces in the southern highlands.
Supplies have tightened. Wathiq Mahyoub, a resident, said prices were rising and fuel was short, and that rubbish was piling up.
He said the Houthis had refused to open the crossing, “even to dump the rubbish.”
Tarik Jašarević, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, said 12 hospitals had about four days of fuel left, with shortages of oxygen and medicines. Road closures were blocking resupply, he said.
Government forces have closed roads into Taiz over fears of infiltration, Al Jazeera reported.
Mocha’s port, once a supply route for the city, is held by the Houthis. They took Yemen’s Red Sea coast, including the port and the Bab al-Mandab area, in a campaign in early September, according to Al Jazeera.
Ibrahim Jalal, a senior researcher and policy adviser, told Al Jazeera the Houthis were trying to isolate and constrict Taiz. Observers describe the battle for the governorate as a stalemate.
Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council, announced an offensive against the Houthis on 4 October to retake lost ground, Al Jazeera reported.
Government forces have since begun a campaign to retake Houthi-held areas near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, Reuters said.
Taiz city remains under government control, while much of the surrounding highland governorate is contested, according to Al Jazeera. The governorate has nearly 4.5 million people.
The camps were filling before the latest fighting. UNHCR said at least 100,000 people had fled their homes, most of them with few belongings, Al Jazeera reported in September.
Ali al-Shumairi, director-general of the Executive Unit for the Management of IDP Camps in Taiz, said 65,845 people were displaced between 10 August and 15 September.
About 95 per cent of them came from the districts of Jabal Habashi, al-Maafer, Maqbana, al-Wazi’iyah and Mawza, he said.
Osama al-Wafi, who supervises the Mushrifa camp in Wadi Bikhawlan, said more than 1,500 families had arrived over six days, most of them sleeping in the open. He described the situation as “dire and tragic.”
Al-Munij camp, about 40 kilometres south-west of Taiz, has housed displaced families since fighting in 2020. Residents there report sporadic drinking water and few toilets.
Malouk Ahmed Ali, 55, from al-Kadaha in western Taiz, told Al Jazeera her family of 14 had fled on foot before being moved by military vehicle. Most of their livestock died or was looted, she said.
Hajj Saif Qaed Thabet, 73, also from al-Kadaha, said he had lived with his wife and four children in an open space without doors since reaching al-Munij camp on 10 September.
The Houthis fired missiles at the presidential palace complex in Aden on Thursday, the government said. It said the strike killed five people.
UNHCR and the World Health Organization have warned that the fighting threatens Yemen’s health system.
The UN humanitarian plan for 2026 put 18.3 million Yemenis in acute food insecurity and 516,157 children under five in severe malnutrition.
Ali Hassan, a 42-year-old resident of Taiz, told Reuters that a Houthi sniper had paralysed his hand in 2021 and that another had shot his sister in the spine a month ago. Reuters said it could not verify the accounts.
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