Houthis blame Saudi air strikes for Taiz market deaths as Yemen’s government points to missiles
Yemen Herald News 
TAIZ, Yemen — An attack on a market in Yemen’s Taiz governorate on Friday killed dozens of people, both sides in the country’s war said, each blaming the other.
Two days on, no independently verified death toll has been published.
The Houthis said Saudi warplanes carried out three air strikes on al-Hadara market in the al-Waziyah district. Yemen’s internationally recognised government said the Houthis fired ballistic missiles at it, and authorities in Taiz said no air strikes took place in the area at all.
Neither account has been confirmed by an independent party. The Associated Press said it could not verify the competing claims. Al Jazeera said the same.
Yahya Saree, the Houthi military spokesman, said the three strikes hit at about 7 a.m., according to the AP.
Saree gave a fuller version to other outlets, saying a Saudi F-15 took off from Khamis Mushait airbase in southwestern Saudi Arabia at 7:10 a.m., attacked the market and returned to base at about 8 a.m., The New Arab reported.
“These brutal crimes will not go unanswered and unpunished,” Saree said, according to The New Arab.
An unnamed Houthi official put the death toll at at least 30, the AP reported. Anees Alsabahi, a spokesman for the Houthi-run health ministry, said eight people were wounded, in a post on X.
The figure of 30 is not reported consistently. The AP carried it as a death toll. The New Arab reported that at least 30 people had been killed and wounded, a combined count.
Neither version of the figure has a hospital, a monitoring group or a United Nations source attached to it.
The Houthi Ministry of Health and Environment in Sanaa called the attack a “horrific crime” and asked for an independent international investigation into what it called Saudi Arabia’s systematic targeting of civilians, Al Jazeera reported.
Col. Majed al-Nazili, a spokesman for Yemeni government forces, said the Houthis had struck the market with ballistic missiles and caused dozens of civilian casualties. He called it a war crime.
Al-Nazili said the Houthis attack civilian areas in revenge for battlefield losses, and asked governments to designate the group a terrorist organisation.
The Taiz local authority said Houthi statements were an attempt to mislead opinion and exploit the deaths of the victims, according to The New Arab. It said the use of ballistic missiles put civilians at risk and that markets should be kept out of the fighting.
The provincial media office acknowledged casualties in a statement on Facebook without giving numbers, the AP reported, and attributed the attack to indiscriminate Houthi missile fire.
The local authority has asked for an investigation and for evidence at the site to be documented, and told residents to stay away from the area, The New Arab reported, citing local media.
Saudi Arabia’s information ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the AP. Al Jazeera reported no response from the Saudi-led coalition.
Al Masirah, a Houthi-aligned channel, broadcast footage of smoke at the site, a damaged building holding canned food, wrecked vehicles, fruit boxes and rubble, the AP reported.
Activists in the area told local media the toll was likely to rise, citing wounded and missing people, bodies that had not been identified and traders who had travelled from other cities, The New Arab reported. It did not name them.
The attack falls inside a government offensive that began on Oct. 5. Rashad al-Alimi, head of the Presidential Leadership Council, launched the campaign, named Dawn of Yemen, to retake territory held by the Houthis, Al Jazeera reported.
Taiz city is held by the government. The Houthis control much of the surrounding governorate and have besieged the city since early October.
The government said it carried out 1,211 operations against Houthi positions on Friday, and claimed the capture of al-Nidani village, Shaab al-Sarari, parts of the Sanamat area and Ribat al-Qarn in Dhi al-Barh. Al Jazeera said it could not verify the figures.
The Presidential Leadership Council said on Thursday that 40,761 military operations had been carried out since the offensive began, and that about 20,000 Houthi fighters and commanders had been “neutralised”. Those counts are also unverified.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported on Friday that more than 323,000 people had been displaced since the escalation began in August. It said more than two in five of them were in Taiz.
The UN Human Rights Office has recorded 281 civilian casualties over the same period — 69 killed and 212 injured — with children accounting for more than a third.
Ilan Abdul Haw, Taiz deputy governor for health affairs, said about 40 percent of hospitals in the governorate had closed, and that those still open were running at half capacity for lack of fuel.
Salah Ahmed Ghaleb al-Majidi, acting director of the governorate’s Siege Affairs Department, described conditions in the city as catastrophic.
Thomas Bonnie James, an assistant professor of politics and international relations at Aberdeen University, said Saudi Arabia was bombing inside Yemen openly for the first time since 2022, and that the offensive was better understood as pressure than as a bid for outright victory.
The Houthis took the Red Sea port of Mocha in September.
About the Author
Adel Haddad 
