Yemen’s legal affairs minister says five killed in Houthi attacks on Taiz

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TAIZ, Yemen — Five people, among them a 12-year-old boy, were killed in attacks on Taiz that Yemen’s minister of legal affairs attributed to the Houthis.

Ishraq al-Maqtari set out the account in posts on X on Wednesday.

She said a mortar shell struck the Salah neighbourhood of Taiz city at midday, killing Yousef Abdulwarith Saif, 12.

Al-Maqtari said the boy was walking home from school when the shell exploded.

She said four people were killed and several wounded early the same day when ballistic missiles struck Al-Turbah, in southern Taiz governorate.

Al-Maqtari said a separate attack on the Al-Ahyouq area of Al-Waziyah district on Tuesday killed a woman and wounded her child.

Yemen Herald could not independently verify the casualty figures. They rest on the minister’s own account, and no second organisation has published a matching count.

The Houthis had made no public comment on the Taiz attacks at the time of writing.

Anadolu Agency carried the same figures on Sept. 30. Its report attributed every number to al-Maqtari and cited no medical source, local official or correspondent of its own.

Parts of the account are corroborated. The Palestinian daily Al-Quds reported on Sept. 30 that four ballistic missiles fell near Al-Turbah, citing field sources.

It said one of them struck near the Motherhood and Childhood Hospital, and that residents were alarmed.

Al-Quds gave no death or injury figures for those strikes.

The newspaper also reported military escalation west of Taiz, citing military sources monitoring Houthi movements.

It said the Giants Forces, a government-aligned formation, announced operations in the area.

Taiz has been a front line for much of Yemen’s war. The city sits in the south-west, between the highlands and the Red Sea coast.

Fighting across the west coast has intensified since early August.

Houthi forces took Mocha port and Mayyun Island earlier in September, Al Jazeera reported. Government units and Houthi fighters were contesting the Kahboub Mountains in Taiz and Lahj.

Each side disputes the other’s account of territorial gains.

The World Health Organization recorded 838 people killed and 3,643 wounded across the country since early August.

WHO said casualties were being reported at a rate of about 100 a day.

The agency warned that Yemen’s health system was nearing collapse, citing damaged facilities and outbreaks of cholera and dengue.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs recorded at least 14 civilians killed or wounded in the first days of September, among them two children.

The fighting has emptied parts of the governorate. The International Organization for Migration said three districts of Taiz had cleared: Maqbanah, Jabal Habashi and Al Ma’afer.

IOM counted 145,308 people displaced in Yemen since insecurity escalated in June, about 24,218 households across eight governorates.

The agency recorded 15,870 of those movements between Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, a rise of 12 percent in a week.

Abdusattor Esoev, IOM’s chief of mission in Yemen, said on Sept. 29 that the agency was counting thousands more people each week who had left everything behind.

Yemen’s Executive Unit for the Management of Displaced Persons Camps put the movement at 23,550 families since Aug. 6, counting from a later date than IOM.

Displaced families moved into Lahj and Aden, and northward into Ibb, according to IOM.

The HALO Trust said this week it had suspended landmine clearance in Taiz and Mokha and moved staff to Aden.

The demining group said renewed fighting risked pushing displaced families into contaminated ground.

It said landmines and unexploded ordnance killed 260 civilians in Yemen in 2024, among them 44 children.

HALO said Yemen ranked third in the world for landmine casualties recorded over the past decade.

The group began work in Aden in 2019 and opened in Taiz city in 2022. It says it has made 2,135,167 square metres of land safe in Yemen.

Clearance has continued elsewhere. The Saudi-funded Masam project reported destroying 299 mines and explosive remnants in Al-Dhale, according to its own account.

The United Nations said 60 percent of Yemen’s health facilities were fully operational.

Marib General Hospital suspended maternity services to take trauma cases, according to the same UN account.

Tom Fletcher, the UN emergency relief coordinator, released 9 million dollars from the Central Emergency Response Fund for the response in Yemen.

Stephane Dujarric, the UN spokesman, said humanitarian supplies were running low and called on the parties to allow aid access.

More than 2,400 people crossed into Djibouti over four days in September, according to the UN refugee agency.

A government coordination meeting in Aden agreed on Sept. 28 to work toward a single set of displacement figures, the state news agency Saba reported.

The United Nations humanitarian plan for 2026 counted 5.2 million people already displaced inside Yemen before the latest fighting.

That plan put the number needing aid at more than 22 million, with 18.3 million acutely food insecure.

It recorded more than 2.2 million children under five as acutely malnourished, 516,157 of them severely.

The plan sought 2.16 billion dollars to reach 12 million people.

Hans Grundberg, the United Nations special envoy for Yemen, said on Thursday he was alarmed by developments in Taiz, citing reports of casualties, damage to infrastructure and road closures.

He repeated his call for the movement to halt its offensive.

Al-Maqtari has held the legal affairs portfolio in the internationally recognised government and has used her account to publish accounts of attacks on civilians.