More than five weeks after Houthi forces encircled Yemen's third-largest city, Taiz remains cut off from the rest of the country, and the people trapped inside are running out of fuel, water and, aid officials warn, time.
The siege began in early October, when Houthi fighters seized the town of al-Turbah and severed the main road linking Taiz to Aden, the seat of Yemen's internationally recognized government. It has since become, in the words of one local official, the worst blockade imposed on a Yemeni city since the civil war began in 2014.
The toll has climbed steadily. A missile strike on a market in the city's al-Waziyah district on Nov. 6 killed at least 30 people and wounded eight more, according to the Houthi-run health ministry; each side in the war blames the other for the attack. The United Nations' human rights office has recorded 281 civilian casualties, including 69 deaths, since fighting escalated in August, more than a third of them children. The UN's humanitarian coordination office says more than 323,000 people have been displaced since then, the great majority from Taiz governorate itself.
Inside the city, roughly 800,000 residents have been cut off from regular supplies. The deputy governor for health, Ilan Abdul Haw, has said about 40 percent of Taiz's hospitals have closed outright and the rest are operating at half capacity. The World Health Organization estimated in late October that the dozen hospitals still functioning had only a few days of diesel left to run their generators; one dialysis unit has cut treatment sessions nearly in half and is buying fuel on the black market at roughly five times its pre-siege price. Water production in the city has fallen by about half, and the price of trucked-in water has tripled.
A city caught between two armies
The siege is a byproduct of a broader government offensive, named Dawn of Yemen, that Rashad al-Alimi, head of the Presidential Leadership Council, launched Oct. 5 with the aim of retaking territory the Houthis have held since they seized the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014. Government forces say they have since recaptured positions in Taiz and in neighboring Lahij governorate, though the claims — which include a disputed tally of 20,000 Houthi fighters "neutralized" — have not been independently verified. The Houthis say they have absorbed nearly 4,000 raids and missile strikes, a figure that is similarly unconfirmed.
Saudi Arabia, which backs the Yemeni government, has resumed airstrikes inside the country for the first time since 2022, while the Houthis have continued to fire at Saudi airports and oil facilities. Neither side has made the kind of decisive gains that would break the stalemate around Taiz, even as the human cost inside the city mounts.
No resolution in sight
Aid officials have grown increasingly blunt about the stakes. "It's 20 days and counting since Taiz has been cut off," OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke said in late October, warning that local groups were burning through their last reserves of fuel to keep water pumps and hospital generators running.
It's 20 days and counting since Taiz has been cut off.
Jens Laerke, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Outside analysts see little prospect of a quick end. Thomas Bonnie James, an Aberdeen University researcher who studies the conflict, says government forces are "spread across too many fronts" with aging equipment to realistically retake Sanaa, and that the current offensive is better understood as a way of pressuring the Houthis — and shoring up Saudi Arabia's position — ahead of any eventual peace talks. He also warned that the onset of winter, combined with the tightening blockade, will make conditions in Taiz worse before they get better, and noted that Yemen's war is entangled with the broader, deadlocked U.S.-Israel conflict with Iran: a fresh American strike on Iran, he said, could prompt Tehran to lean on the Houthis to pressure Saudi Arabia further.
For now, there is no sign of a negotiated opening of the Taiz-Aden road, and no timeline for when the city's hospitals might be resupplied. Doctors in the city have warned for weeks that a full collapse of medical services is imminent if fuel does not arrive soon.
