A month after Ansar Allah, the movement widely known as the Houthis, captured the town of al-Turbah and the government launched a Saudi-backed offensive the next day, residents of Taiz are burning uncollected rubbish in the streets of a city now encircled.
The two moves came on October 4 and 5, and each side presents its campaign as an answer to the other. Taiz, Yemen's third-largest city, is where they meet. Since that weekend, sanitation trucks have been unable to reach the main landfill, UN officials say water production has halved, and the World Food Programme says lifesaving aid to 800,000 people has been cut off.
The road to that weekend began on July 13, when Saudi and Yemeni government aircraft struck the runway at Sanaa airport to stop an Iranian flight from landing. Ansar Allah declared the truce that had held since 2022 over in response.
On September 3, Ansar Allah forces launched an offensive in Taiz province aimed at cutting the city's roads to the coast. On September 21, Iran's Tasnim news agency, citing field sources quoted by Lebanon's Al-Akhbar, reported that they had taken mountain positions overlooking al-Turbah, and presented the advance as part of a response to Saudi airstrikes on Yemeni civilians.
Al-Turbah, on the main road between Taiz and Aden, fell on October 4 after government forces withdrew. The next day President Rashad al-Alimi, head of the Presidential Leadership Council, announced “Dawn of Yemen”, an operation he said aims to “liberate the capital Sanaa”. Saudi military spokesman Turki al-Malki pledged “full operational support” until Ansar Allah was “eliminated”.
Ansar Allah's leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, rejects the description of Taiz as besieged. Speaking on the movement's Al-Masirah TV, he said that “as far as food and humanitarian needs are concerned, the way is open”, and that his forces were cutting off only weapons to what he called “Saudi-backed militias”. He dismissed siege reports as “Saudi-fabricated claims”.
The main landfill in western Taiz sits on the front line, in an area held by Ansar Allah, and sanitation workers told Al Jazeera that sniper fire has made it unsafe to reach. Collection has been severely disrupted since October 5, according to Mohammed Ibrahim, director of a local cleaning initiative, who also pointed to funding cuts and disrupted supplies.
The city produces 550 to 600 tonnes of waste a day, Al Jazeera reported. With nowhere to take it, residents have been setting it alight in the streets and along the al-Saeed stream, and the smoke drifts into nearby homes.
The fires come on top of a deeper strain. OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke said water production in the city has fallen by about half and the price of trucked water has roughly tripled. UNICEF said more than 52,000 of 168,000 children screened in Taiz this year were acutely malnourished. Across Yemen, the fighting has displaced at least 290,000 people since it escalated in August, according to OCHA.
Both sides report civilian deaths, and none of the tolls has been independently confirmed.
On October 29, the Sanaa health ministry, run by Ansar Allah, said at least 13 people were killed in an airstrike in western Taiz that the Associated Press described as Saudi. Ansar Allah said Saudi-led aircraft carried out 100 strikes in the 24 hours to October 24. Government-loyal forces have also carried out their own airstrikes, including nine in Taiz province on October 13, Al Jazeera reported.
Government-run Yemen TV said this week that a missile fired by Ansar Allah killed four members of one family and injured four others in al-Athawir, in Taiz's Hayfan district; six of the eight were children. Ansar Allah had not commented, Anadolu reported.
The next test is the aid road. UN Humanitarian Coordinator Laurent Bukera has called on Ansar Allah to urgently open safe passage for supplies; its leader says the way for food is already open. Whether convoys reach the city, and whether trucks can get back to the landfill, will be the clearest measure of both claims.