Accounts differ on toll from rocket attack on central Taiz as UN presses for aid access
Yemen Herald News 
TAIZ, Yemen — A rocket attack struck densely populated districts of central Taiz on Tuesday, killing at least one girl and wounding several others.
Accounts of the toll differ.
The Associated Press, citing local authorities, reported two teenage girls killed and six other people wounded. It said several buildings were damaged.
Saba, Yemen’s state news agency, gave a different count. It reported one girl killed and eight people wounded, including women and children.
A medical source told Saba that some of the wounded were in critical condition. The agency reported two houses destroyed.
A military source told Saba that the projectile was a Katyusha rocket fired from Houthi positions on Mount al-Waash, north of Taiz governorate. The source said it struck the Sina’a area.
An Associated Press photographer recorded debris in the Seina district after the strike.
Yemen Herald could not reconcile the two tolls. Both accounts place a rocket in residential Taiz on Tuesday and report at least one girl killed. They differ on the number of dead and wounded.
The Associated Press said the rocket hit a residential area of Yemen’s third-largest city.
The agency spoke to Zainab Ali, a resident who was away when the projectile landed and returned to find her home destroyed.
It said the Yemeni government separately claimed it had repelled Houthi attacks elsewhere in Taiz, and that the agency could not verify that claim.
The Houthis did not publish a response to the reports.
Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on Tuesday he was alarmed by the encirclement of Taiz by the de facto authorities. He warned of a possible human rights catastrophe.
“The Houthis’ closure of the only supply route linking Taiz to Aden is placing civilians at grave risk,” Türk said.
His office said the closure is blocking aid and cutting off essential goods. It said commodity prices have risen sharply and many residents lack food and other basics.
The office said it had also monitored restricted access to water and essential goods along the al-Dhabab route.
OHCHR verified 32 civilian deaths across Taiz governorate between August 1 and October 19. It said the dead included 14 children and nine women.
The office recorded 115 civilians injured over the same period, among them 36 children and 34 women. That tally closed a day before Tuesday’s attack.
Türk said the risk to civilians rises as fighting nears densely populated areas.
He called on the Houthis to allow aid into the city immediately and to let it pass. He said civilians who wish to leave must be allowed to do so “freely and safely.”
Türk urged all parties to avoid explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated areas, and to take all feasible precautions to protect civilians and civilian objects.
He also called on the de facto authorities to release UN and non-governmental organisation staff held arbitrarily, and to disclose the whereabouts of people held incommunicado.
The Houthis encircled Taiz after capturing a road linking the city to southern Yemen, Al Jazeera reported on Tuesday.
The World Food Programme says shifting front lines and road closures have cut 800,000 people off from aid. It says most of them are in Taiz.
Yemen’s internationally recognised government says the siege threatens more than 4 million people.
More than 18 million Yemenis face severe food insecurity, according to UN figures.
The UN humanitarian response plan for 2026 put the number of people in need across Yemen at more than 22 million, with 5.2 million displaced inside the country.
The plan recorded more than 2.2 million children under five acutely malnourished, 516,157 of them severely. It sought 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people.
UNHCR has reported more than 250,000 people displaced in Yemen since fighting escalated.
Government forces said they stopped Houthi advances at al-Shaqab, al-Misrakh, al-Aqroudh and Jabal Han. They said they struck targets at Najd Qasim and Jabal Habashi.
The Houthis dispute the government’s battlefield accounts. The two sides routinely give conflicting descriptions of the same engagements.
Earlier this month, government sources said troops captured 81 Houthi fighters at al-Dhabab.
Saba reported that a five-year-old girl, Ahlam Abdulsalam, died when shelling hit her family’s home in al-Misrakh on October 12.
A Houthi attack struck al-Safwa Hospital in Taiz early on October 13, shattering windows and injuring at least one person, Al Jazeera reported.
The Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms documented 43 Houthi violations in Taiz over 24 hours that week. It said five civilians were killed and 17 wounded.
A ballistic missile hit Jabal Kahboub at midnight on October 12. A Southern Giants Brigades source said there were no casualties.
Local authorities in Shabwa governorate raised to 73 the death toll from a Houthi missile attack on a military camp on Monday, Al Jazeera reported.
Houthi mortar shelling hit the al-Ikhwa neighbourhood of Taiz on October 12, with an undetermined number of casualties, Al Jazeera reported.
Earlier shelling that week injured five people, including three children, in al-Dhahra and Beer Basha, according to Saba.
Taiz has been fought over since 2015. The city lies in a bowl below Mount Sabr, and the high ground around it has changed hands repeatedly.
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