Starving to death at the hands of the Houthis

For three weeks, Taiz, one of Yemen’s largest and most populous cities, has been under siege by the Yemeni Houthi group, and its inhabitants, the Yemenis, are running out of everything: food, drinking water, fuel and medicines in hospitals, which are now down to a bare minimum. In recent weeks, the Iranian-backed rebel militia has launched missiles and drones against military bases, energy facilities and airports in Saudi Arabia, and has seized 130 kilometres of south-western coastline on the Red Sea, including the port city of Mokha and the island of Perim, or Mayyun, in a conflict with the Yemeni government that has caused hundreds of deaths and displaced over 250,000 people. On Monday, a Houthi ballistic missile strike hit a military camp belonging to government forces, killing at least 73 soldiers and wounding more than 200, marking the bloodiest attack since fighting resumed this summer – so much so that the ‘Davos in the Desert’, due to be held next week in Riyadh, has been postponed until 2027.

The following day, it was the turn of a residential neighbourhood in Taiz; two teenage girls were killed and the UN intervened to urge that aid be allowed in and that civilians be permitted to flee the city safely – hundreds of thousands of whom are trapped in the fighting – otherwise there is a risk of a humanitarian catastrophe. Abdul Basit al Baher, an army officer, said that Houthi bombardments do not even stop at the city’s outskirts and that government forces are “trapped on all sides and without weapons supplies. ‘Once our current stocks are exhausted, we will have no more resources,’ but surrender is not an option, and so the sacrifice continues; as usual, it is the Yemenis who are paying the price, dying under the bombs and in hospitals without access to treatment, having already endured a gruelling siege that lasted for years and began in 2015, in the early months of the civil war. Since the Arab Spring, Taiz has been the stronghold of resistance against the Houthis in the southern mountains of the country. Those who have lived through it say that this is far worse.