Yemen's Houthi Rebels Tighten Siege on Third-Largest City of Taiz

▲ Taiz, Yemen

Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels are tightening a multi-layered siege on Taiz, Yemen's third-largest city with a population of 600,000, demanding the surrender of government forces and resistance fighters.

As Yemen's civil war intensifies in the wake of the Middle East conflict triggered by US and Israeli airstrikes on Iran last February, the Houthis, who control the Red Sea coast, have engaged in fierce battles and are now pressing into Taiz, escalating fear among residents and deepening the humanitarian crisis.

According to foreign media outlets including dpa and Reuters on the 16th local time, the Houthi rebels demanded that the internationally recognized Yemeni government forces and local resistance groups defending Taiz lay down their weapons and surrender to avoid urban warfare.

In recent weeks, the rebels have narrowed the siege by cutting off the primary western access routes toward Taiz.

The Yemeni government and local authorities have urged the Houthi rebels to make an unconditional withdrawal and accept the general amnesty announced by Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council.

According to local sources, both sides are hardening their resolve to fight to the finish, and airstrikes targeting Houthi troops and military vehicles have continued on the outskirts of Taiz.

The fate of Taiz is expected to be a major turning point in Yemen's civil war, which resumed this summer after a four-year truce broke down.

Taiz remains the final major urban stronghold of anti-Houthi forces in the southern highlands.

The Houthi rebels recently solidified their control over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a strategic chokepoint on the Red Sea coast, through a surprise advance, and launched a missile attack on the presidential palace complex in southern Aden the previous day.

As combat intensifies, residents of Taiz find themselves at a crossroads of survival.

Ali Hassan, a local resident interviewed by Reuters, said he and his family had fled from the Houthi advance and taken shelter under the stairs of a school, expressing anguish over the hail of gunfire and the terror of food and water shortages.

With major southward roads blocked, prices have skyrocketed, garbage has piled up like mountains in the streets, and the entire city has fallen into a state of suffocation.

International organizations have also sounded the alarm in unison.

A spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) stated that recent conflict has displaced approximately 233,000 people, with more than half of them—some 121,000—driven out of Taiz.

The World Health Organization (WHO) also warned that 12 major hospitals in Taiz have only four days' worth of fuel left, while supplies of oxygen and medicines are running out, raising concerns over disrupted aid deliveries caused by fighting and road blockades.

The World Food Programme (WFP) estimated that 800,000 people across Yemen, including the 600,000 residents of Taiz, have been cut off from humanitarian assistance.

(Photo: AP, Yonhap News)

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