Government-aligned forces say 27 Houthi fighters killed in three days on the Al-Barh front in Taiz
Yemen Herald News 
Government-aligned forces in Yemen say more than 27 Houthi fighters were killed and 19 wounded in three days of strikes on the Al-Barh front in western Taiz province, as fighting along the province’s western approaches intensified during the sharpest escalation the country has seen in several years. The figures were issued by the National Resistance Forces and have not been independently verified; the Houthi movement has not published its own account of losses on that front.
The same forces said they repelled a fresh Houthi assault on Al-Barh, describing an attempt to advance with large numbers of fighters supported by artillery, mortar fire and drones. According to their account, the movement was detected before it reached defensive positions and the attacking units were forced to withdraw, with several military vehicles set alight or disabled. Government commanders framed the outcome as a failed infiltration attempt rather than a shift in the line.
Al-Barh sits in the western part of Taiz province, in the belt of country between the provincial capital and the Red Sea coastal plain. It has been one of the more active front lines in Yemen for years, in part because it lies on the routes connecting the coast to the highlands. Control of that corridor shapes what can be moved into and out of Taiz city, which has spent much of the war partially encircled and dependent on difficult secondary roads.
The National Resistance Forces, led by Tariq Saleh, hold much of the western Taiz and Mokha area. Saleh sits on the Presidential Leadership Council, the eight-member body established in April 2022 to bring together the main anti-Houthi factions under a single nominal command. In practice the council’s constituent forces retain separate chains of command and separate regional bases, and the Al-Barh front is largely a National Resistance sector.
Casualty claims from Yemeni front lines require caution. Both sides publicise enemy losses and rarely disclose their own, and figures released in the days immediately after fighting often change. Separately, local reports recorded pro-government soldiers killed in clashes elsewhere in Taiz province during the same period, an indication that the fighting has not been one-sided. What can be said with reasonable confidence is that sustained combat took place on the Al-Barh axis and that neither side appears to have taken significant new ground.
The Taiz fighting is part of a broader pattern. Over the same weeks, Houthi forces struck the Red Sea port of Mokha repeatedly, killing civilians and members of the security forces and eventually forcing the harbour to suspend commercial and maritime operations after what its director described as more than twenty-five missile impacts. In Marib, the provincial authority reported four ballistic missiles and four drones hitting the city in a single day, damaging homes and wounding residents in a capital that shelters one of Yemen’s largest displaced populations. Officials have also reported increased activity around Hadramout and Hodeidah.
Taken together, these are not isolated skirmishes. They describe simultaneous pressure on the government’s coastal supply line, its inland stronghold and its western front, which is why the United Nations Special Envoy for Yemen has warned that the country now faces its highest risk of returning to large-scale conflict since the truce concluded in April 2022.
That truce is the reference point for everything happening now. It formally lapsed after six months, but its central provisions held informally along most front lines, and the resulting calm allowed fuel imports to become more predictable, permitted a limited resumption of commercial flights from Sanaa, and reduced civilian casualties substantially compared with the preceding years. Front-line activity never stopped entirely, and Taiz in particular saw regular exchanges throughout, but nothing on the scale of the offensives that characterised 2020 and 2021.
For civilians in western Taiz the practical consequences of renewed fighting arrive quickly. Roads close, markets in front-line villages empty, and families living within range of artillery move to relatives elsewhere or to informal settlements. Landmines and unexploded ordnance are a persistent hazard across the province, and every round of fighting adds to a contamination problem that demining teams have been working through slowly.
Aid organisations working in the province have warned that a sustained escalation would reverse fragile gains in food security and access. Humanitarian funding for Yemen has tightened, and agencies have been reducing programmes rather than expanding them, which leaves little capacity to absorb a new wave of displacement from the western districts.
Taiz city itself remains a particular concern. It is among the most densely populated urban areas in Yemen and has endured years of siege conditions, with residents reliant on mountain tracks when the main routes are cut. Any deterioration on the western approaches raises transport costs for a population whose incomes have not recovered, and complicates the delivery of water and medical supplies into neighbourhoods that were already difficult to reach.
What happens next on the Al-Barh axis is unclear. Government commanders say their positions held and that they expect further attempts. Mediators continue to press both sides to avoid a general offensive, and diplomatic activity around Yemen has increased in recent weeks, though without producing any public commitment from either party to reduce operations. For now the line near Al-Barh remains where it was, held after three days of fighting that neither side has been able to turn into an advance.
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