Yemeni army says 97 operations put 260 Houthi fighters out of action on Taiz fronts
Yemen Herald News 
ADEN, Yemen — Yemen’s military said 97 targeting operations on Sunday put 260 Houthi fighters out of action on the Taiz and Tor al-Baha fronts.
Col. Majed al-Nazili, a spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, gave the figure in a statement the same day.
He said the operations destroyed or disabled 44 military and transport vehicles.
Al-Nazili said the strikes hit Houthi reinforcements moving toward the Taiz axis and the Tor al-Baha front in Lahj governorate.
He said a larger round of operations the previous day numbered 257 and left at least 700 Houthi fighters killed or wounded.
The spokesman called those numbers preliminary field estimates. He said the Saturday operations also destroyed 170 combat vehicles.
Yemen Herald could not independently verify the tallies. They rest on the military’s own account, and no second organisation has published a matching count.
There was no immediate Houthi comment on the figures.
Al-Nazili said warplanes, drones, artillery, missiles and rocket launchers were used. He said the targets included command centres, troop concentrations, weapons depots and supply routes.
He said the operations extended beyond Taiz and Lahj to Sanaa, Midi, Baqim, al-Jawf, Marib and al-Bayda.
The spokesman put cumulative Houthi losses over the past week at close to 6,000 killed or wounded. No independent body has published a comparable figure.
He gave no figure for government losses.
Speaking to The National, al-Nazili said the strikes “killed dozens of Houthi fighters and reinforcements, and destroyed equipment and vehicles belonging to the group.”
Al Jazeera reported that the 97 operations on Sunday were carried out by the Saudi-led coalition, against reinforcements on the Tor al-Baha front and the Taiz axis.
The coalition has fought alongside the Yemeni government since 2015.
The statements followed a televised address on Sunday by Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council.
Al-Alimi said he had instructed the armed forces, security forces and all military formations “to begin carrying out their assigned tasks under an approved plan until the country is liberated from the Houthis.”
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group had fired ballistic missiles and drones at two Saudi Aramco sites, one in Riyadh and one near Khurais, about 150 kilometres northeast of the Saudi capital, Al Jazeera reported.
The Houthis denied responsibility for an attack on a power distribution station in Madinah, The National reported.
Ground positions around Taiz shifted in both directions over the same weekend, according to reporting by Asharq al-Awsat.
The newspaper said al-Safiya and al-Barkani came under Houthi control on Sunday.
It said Houthi forces cut the road linking al-Turbah, the administrative centre of al-Shamayatayn district, with Taiz city.
On the southeastern front, the paper said government forces took Sama Fort and advanced toward Jabal al-Jaasha.
It said Houthi forces later regained al-Maqarm and al-Zakira in al-Shamayatayn district after government forces had held them.
Each side disputes the other’s account of which areas it holds.
The National reported that Houthi fighters were trying to push into Taiz itself, with clashes in residential neighbourhoods east of the city.
It said the city lies about 100 kilometres from Mokha, which Houthi forces seized last month.
Al Jazeera reported that Houthi forces also took islands in the Bab al-Mandab strait in mid-September.
The newspaper said the defence ministry had warned residents to avoid dozens of roads across Taiz governorate.
Hans Grundberg, the UN special envoy for Yemen, said on Oct. 1 that he was alarmed by developments in Taiz governorate, where fighting had intensified.
Grundberg said his office had received reports of casualties, damage to infrastructure and road closures that were limiting civilian movement. He said civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected.
The International Organisation for Migration said more than 149,000 people had been displaced, most of them from Taiz and Lahj governorates, and that it expected the figure to rise.
The Houthis have held Sanaa since 2014. The internationally recognised government has operated from Aden and from Riyadh since.
A truce agreed in 2022 collapsed in July. Fighting has intensified since.
Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on Sept. 24 that 32 civilians had been killed since the start of August, among them 15 children and three women.
Türk said in August that at least 17 civilians had been killed in Houthi attacks in government-held areas since Aug. 6.
Türk said ground fighting and airstrikes had killed and wounded at least 125 civilians over the same period. He said about 125,000 people had been displaced by the renewed violence at that point.
The rights office said six civilians were injured at the Jaw al-Naseem camp for displaced people on Aug. 7.
It said three port workers were killed and four injured at Mokha port on Aug. 9, and four crew members were killed on a cargo ship in the Bab al-Mandab strait on Aug. 11.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its March 2026 plan that more than 22 million people in Yemen need assistance.
OCHA said 18.3 million people were acutely food insecure and more than 2.2 million children under five acutely malnourished, 516,157 of them severely.
It put the number of internally displaced people at 5.2 million. The plan sought $2.16 billion to reach 12 million people.
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