Yemeni warplanes strike Houthi positions as Taiz offensive enters third day
Yemen Herald News 
TAIZ, Yemen — Yemeni government warplanes struck Houthi positions in Taiz and Hodeidah on Friday, the military said, as ground forces fought a Houthi push toward the Red Sea.
The military counted at least 15 strikes on Houthi positions, gatherings and vehicles in the two western provinces, according to Al Jazeera.
The Houthis opened simultaneous ground attacks early Thursday on government lines in southern Hodeidah and in three districts west of Taiz, taking several positions in Jabal Habashi district, Arab News reported from Al-Mukalla.
Hours earlier they shelled those lines with dozens of artillery rounds and fired at least 12 missiles and drones, according to the same report.
Officials called the assault the heaviest in years. It was the largest since a UN-brokered truce took effect in April 2022.
Government troops retook a hilltop in Jabal Habashi on Friday, the army said. Fighting continued in Maqbanah and al-Kadaha, west of Taiz, according to an army statement.
The government-aligned National Resistance said its forces fought heavy clashes in southern Hodeidah. It reported no territorial gains and released footage it said showed overnight exchanges of fire.
Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Sanaa, Yousef Mawry, reported that the Houthis had taken a military base on high ground in western Taiz overlooking the surrounding area. He said fighting was heaviest around al-Barah and Maqbanah, on a road used to resupply government troops in Taiz and Mokha.
Both sides’ territorial claims are disputed. Yemen Herald could not independently confirm which positions changed hands.
Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemeni American analyst and a former spokesman for Yemen’s embassy in Washington, told Al Jazeera the Houthis had made initial gains in a surprise multi-axis assault but had not broken through.
“The front did not collapse, the Taiz-al-Makha corridor was not severed, and attempts to expand the offensive towards other strategically important positions were stopped,” al-Basha said.
Government and allied forces recovered much of the ground lost on the first day, he said. A Houthi attempt to take Jabal Dhu Ba’s, north of Hays, was repelled by National Resistance forces.
Al-Basha named Jabal Numan, which overlooks the Taiz-Mokha road, as the contested position that matters most now. “The next phase is likely to be more difficult,” he said.
On the Haifan front south of Taiz, a military source from the 4th Hazm Brigade told Saba that troops had captured the heights of al-Wathra, Saeed Taha, Dhiban, al-Khadira and al-Najdain. Officials said the positions overlook al-Khazja market and cut Houthi supply routes running toward southern Taiz and north-western Lahj. The Houthis have not responded to that account.
Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council, said Thursday night the government would deliver a “decisive” response. Saba, the state news agency, said he spoke after a telephone call with local commanders.
A Yemeni official in Aden told Agence France-Presse the Houthis were trying to seize hills overlooking Mokha and Bab al-Mandab before pushing to the coast.
Control of that coastline would strengthen the Houthi position on the Red Sea, where the group has attacked commercial and military vessels, and would threaten a government supply route.
The Houthis held Mokha until 2017, when government forces and the Saudi-led coalition drove them out. The group declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia in July.
Friday’s air raids were not the government’s first this year. Its aircraft struck missile and drone launch sites and weapons depots in Marib and al-Jawf on July 25, Yemeni military officials told Reuters.
On July 13 the government said it had struck the runway at Houthi-held Sanaa International Airport to stop an Iranian aircraft landing.
Saudi-led coalition aircraft supplied most of the air power backing government forces through the heaviest years of the war. Human Rights Watch documented dozens of apparently unlawful coalition air attacks on homes, markets, hospitals, schools and detention centres between 2014 and 2022.
More than 120 fighters have been killed since Thursday, according to a tally by Agence France-Presse. Government-aligned media put Houthi losses at about 50 killed or wounded, including two field commanders, in one 24-hour period. The Houthis have not published a count.
Saba said a Houthi missile hit a crowded stretch of the Heijah al-Abd road south of Taiz city on Saturday, killing at least four civilians and wounding nine. It attributed the toll to local and medical sources. The Houthis have not commented, and no party outside the government has confirmed it.
The fighting has emptied camps. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said nearly 1,800 families fled their homes in under 48 hours.
Shelling in Maqbanah and Jabal Habashi cleared several displacement sites entirely, OCHA said. Most families moved within the same districts. Others went to nearby areas.
Aid groups said some families were trapped on the front lines and needed safe passage. Those who got out arrived with almost no food, shelter or supplies. Phone and internet networks are cut across the combat zones.
Emergency stocks are “severely depleted”, the agencies said, leaving “limited capacity” to help the newly displaced.
Yemen’s humanitarian plan for 2026 counts more than 22 million people in need and 18.3 million who are acutely food insecure. It records 5.2 million people already displaced.
The Houthis took Sanaa in September 2014. The Saudi-led coalition intervened in March 2015. Taiz has been divided by front lines since that year.
Mokha lies about 100 kilometres west of Taiz city.
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