When shelling and gunfire broke four years of calm in Jabal Habashi district in mid-September, Mohammed, 39, fled his village with his wife and child for Taiz city.
He joined civilians displaced by fighting that has returned to a governorate which has spent most of Yemen’s 12-year war on the front line between the government and the Houthis. Abdulrahman, 34, was displaced from Taiz governorate’s al-Waziiya district two weeks ago.
Now the routes into Taiz are under fresh pressure. Houthi militants have cut the road connection between Taiz and Aden, two government-controlled cities, security sources said. Aden is the interim capital of the Saudi-backed government, and the road has been an important supply line for its forces and administration.
The closure followed the Houthi seizure of al-Safiya, where the group took over the police station and cut the main road. Three Yemeni military sources confirmed Houthi control of the area and the supply route, leaving Taiz effectively encircled.
Fighting in recent weeks has centred on the western parts of the governorate, including Jabal Habashi and Al-Wazayah districts, as well as southern Taiz. Mohammed Radman, a displacement coordinator with the Executive Unit for IDP Camp Management in Jabal Habashi district, told Al Jazeera that road closures had brought “indescribable human suffering” to Taiz and other areas. Before the escalation, he said, aid and supplies had reached Taiz easily.
“Closed roads … sometimes mean death for civilians,” Radman said. “travel is risky; travellers must navigate arduous, mountainous alternative roads.”
A trip from Taiz to Aden now takes six hours or more on those alternative mountain routes. Before the ongoing conflict, the same journey took about two hours.
The road closure marks the latest stage of a Houthi advance that accelerated in September. The group took over Yemen’s entire Red Sea coast, including Al-Makha and the southern Red Sea Coast. In early September, Houthi forces had seized Al-Makha and the southern Red Sea Coast.
Since then, the group has kept up attacks in Taiz aimed at severing roads and supply lines between the city and other government-held areas. Its forces attempted to cut the Taiz-Al-Makha road, supply lines west towards Al-Makha, and routes south through Lahj towards Aden. Isolating Taiz would put the city on the defensive and deny it a base for counter-offensives towards the coast.
The Houthis have controlled the capital, Sanaa, since 2014 and are tightening their grip on the Bab al-Mandeb strait, an important international shipping route. On Sunday in early October, Yemen’s government said it would begin a counter-offensive to recover Houthi-held territory.
The military contest is unfolding alongside a worsening humanitarian emergency. The United Nations said on 22 September that displacement caused by the latest fighting could rise to more than 230,000. More than 5.2 million people were already internally displaced in Yemen.
Yemen relies on imports for nearly 90 percent of its food commodities. Wheat and flour imports fell 48 percent month-on-month in August and were 32 percent below three-year averages. Fuel imports dropped 67 percent from July and stood 89 percent below historical averages, while northern ports received no petrol or diesel.
The International Organization for Migration estimates that more than 22 million Yemenis, approximately half the population, urgently need humanitarian aid.
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