Taiz, Yemen – A week before the latest fighting erupted around Taiz, southern Yemen, Ahmed al-Mikhlafi left the city with his wife and three children to perform Umrah in Mecca. But when the family returned, they found themselves stranded in the western countryside of Taiz, unable to reach the city where their home and Ahmed’s job were. The Houthis’ siege on Taiz has now lasted 30 days and affected hundreds of thousands of people in the area.
The United Nations has repeatedly warned of a catastrophe inside the city, where supplies of food and medicine are becoming increasingly scarce. We had no choice but to stay away and delay our return for more than two weeks, hoping the fighting would end and the siege would be lifted,” Ahmed, whose name has been shortened for security reasons, told Al Jazeera. The Houthis reached the outskirts of Taiz in 2015, after pushing the government out of the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014, besieging it from the north, east and south.
But in their recent takeover of the governorate’s western countryside, they have completely encircled the city. The blockade has affected the 1.5 million people living in Taiz City, and others living in the governorate’s rural districts, including about 180,000 displaced people also trapped by ongoing clashes along the main road connecting Lahj and Taiz. One month on, Salah Ahmed Ghaleb al-Majidi, acting director of the governorate’s Siege Affairs Department, described the situation as “the worst catastrophic siege imposed on a Yemeni city since the war began in 2014”.
Food, fuel, medical supplies and water are not reaching the city as tonnes of rubbish unable to be sent to landfill outside are accumulating on the streets. Al-Majidi said the closure of major access roads had consequences extending far beyond the disruption of humanitarian supplies of food, medicine and fuel to the city. Families have faced severe difficulties reaching relatives due to both main and secondary roads between the Taiz countryside and the city being cut off by the Houthis.
Ahmed and his family have witnessed the impact of this first-hand. After returning from Saudi Arabia to Aden, he and his family boarded a shared passenger vehicle bound for Taiz. But with the main Hayjat al-Abd–al-Turbah route closed, the passengers were forced to take a rough secondary road to the city.
Ahmed’s wife, known as Umm Adam, said the route to Taiz was fraught with danger. There were no other options.” The family spent another two days waiting in a small rural hotel until they could continue their journey. The siege on Taiz has been met with a sharp increase in the prices of goods and services, affecting lower-income Yemenis the most.
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