Yemen’s prime minister asks the EU to press the Houthis to lift the Taiz siege
Yemen Herald News 
ADEN, Yemen — Yemen’s prime minister asked the European Union to press the Houthis to lift their siege of Taiz in a call with its ambassador on Monday.
Prime Minister Shaya al-Zindani spoke by telephone with Patrick Simonnet, the European Union ambassador to Yemen, according to a report by Saba, the state news agency of Yemen’s internationally recognised government.
Al-Zindani urged the international community to pressure the Houthis to end the siege and reopen roads for civilians and humanitarian supplies, Saba said.
He said attacks on Aden International Airport and on Maashiq Palace, together with continued shelling and the siege of Taiz, reflected an approach that threatened the security and stability of Yemen and the region.
He also cited Houthi attacks on civilian facilities in Saudi Arabia.
Al-Zindani reaffirmed what he described as the government’s commitment to protecting civilians and vital facilities, maintaining public services and restoring state authority across the country.
Simonnet reaffirmed the European Union’s attention to developments in Yemen and its continued support for the government, Saba said.
Al-Zindani welcomed the European Commission’s allocation of a further 22.5 million euros in humanitarian aid for Yemen and thanked the bloc for its support.
The European Union announced that allocation on Sunday. It comes on top of 87.5 million euros committed earlier in the year, taking the bloc’s humanitarian funding for Yemen in 2026 to 110 million euros.
The account of the call rests on that Saba report. Yemen Herald found no second origin for the call itself, and no independent confirmation of it has been published.
Parts of the surrounding account are independently reported. Simonnet said this week that concrete steps were needed within days rather than weeks to halt the escalation, in remarks published by The National.
He said he was deeply concerned by the prolonged siege of Taiz, which has restricted access to scarce essential supplies, and called on the Houthis to lift it immediately and allow food, water, medicines and fuel into the city.
The European Union mission to Yemen has made the same call in public, urging Houthi forces to lift the siege and allow those supplies through.
Simonnet also telephoned Foreign Minister Afrah al-Zouba and the governor of Taiz earlier this month to condemn the siege, Arab News reported.
Yemen Herald could not obtain a Houthi response to al-Zindani’s remarks. The Houthis, who have held Sanaa since 2014, reject the government’s accounts of the fighting.
The attacks al-Zindani cited have been reported independently. Arab News said a Houthi missile strike hit the presidential palace in Aden on Oct. 15, killing two members of the prime minister’s security detail.
Al-Zindani and cabinet ministers were unharmed. The government said several ballistic missiles were fired.
It was the second Houthi attack on Aden since Oct. 5, when the government announced a nationwide military operation, according to the same report.
The Houthis fired ballistic missiles and drones at Aden International Airport on Oct. 7, Arab News said. Incoming flights were diverted and aircraft parked on the tarmac were evacuated.
The Houthis also targeted Marib on Oct. 15. There was no immediate information on casualties or damage there.
Fighting around Taiz has centred on Mount Han, west of the city. Houthi fighters tried to take positions there on the evening of Oct. 14, and government forces pushed them off by the following morning.
A Yemeni government official, speaking anonymously, said the Houthis had suffered heavy losses and that captured fighters included recent recruits and former administrative staff. Those claims could not be independently verified.
Yemen’s Information Ministry has described the Houthi forces as backed by the Iranian government, a characterisation the group rejects.
The Houthis have imposed a complete siege on Taiz, blocking essential goods and medicines to hundreds of thousands of residents, Arab News reported.
Taiz, in Yemen’s southern highlands, has been divided by front lines for most of the war. Roads into the city have been closed or restricted for years, forcing traffic onto long detours.
More than 250,000 people have been displaced in Yemen since June, according to United Nations figures.
The Houthis took Yemen’s western coast in July, and fighting has since intensified around Taiz and along the Red Sea.
Hans Grundberg, the United Nations special envoy for Yemen, said on Oct. 9 that the country had slid back into full-scale war.
A truce brokered by the United Nations in 2022 has since lapsed.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its March 2026 response plan that more than 22 million people in Yemen need assistance and that 18.3 million are acutely food insecure.
That plan sought 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people. It recorded 5.2 million people displaced inside the country, and more than 2.2 million children under five who are acutely malnourished.
UNICEF put the number of people needing water, sanitation and hygiene support at 15.2 million in its 2026 appeal, and sought 146.3 million dollars to reach 5.2 million people.
The agency warned that a million people could be left without safe drinking water if funding did not arrive in time.
Cholera has added to the strain. UNICEF recorded 93,496 suspected cases and 248 deaths by December 2025.
The European Union’s mission to Yemen operates from Aden.
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