--- title: A Million People are Under Siege in Yemen. description: "Fronts video analysis of A Million People are Under Siege in Yemen, with context on conflict, defense, and security." url: https://fronts.co/videos/a-million-people-are-under-siege-in-yemen.md canonical: https://fronts.co/videos/a-million-people-are-under-siege-in-yemen/ datePublished: 2026-10-23T21:00:26.000Z dateModified: 2026-10-23T21:00:26.000Z author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://fronts.co/authors/simon-whistler/ publisher: Fronts image: "https://media.fronts.co/cdn-cgi/image/width=1200,height=630,fit=cover,gravity=auto,quality=80,format=auto/images/articles/a-million-people-are-under-siege-in-yemen-e9f36596.png" type: NewsArticle language: en access: members isAccessibleForFree: false tokens: 4845 --- The nation of Yemen is facing a crisis within a crisis. Over nearly two months of fighting the Iran-backed Houthi rebels have exploded down the Red Sea Coast, expanded their control over key territory, and launched a successful missile and drone campaign against Yemen's wealthier neighbour Saudi Arabia. But nestled into the hills of Yemen's southwest, a humanitarian catastrophe is quickly taking shape, with the potential to be immensely costly for Yemeni civilians. There, the city of Taiz has been under a continual state of siege since 2015, held by Yemeni forces but partially encircled by the Houthis along a frozen front line. Today, the stalemate has broken decisively in the Houthis favour, and Taiz is now totally encircled by rebel forces. Inside the city, food, water and medicine are running out. Over a million people have thought to be trapped inside, including tens of thousands who fled into Taiz over the last several weeks to try and escape the fighting elsewhere. The final road link to the de facto Yemeni capital of Aden on the southern coast has now been severed, and the Houthis are fighting tooth and nail to take over the surrounding hills, allowing them to fire down into the city with impunity. Yemeni forces and their Saudi allies are thus far unable to break the siege or even challenge Houthi positions, and the international community hardly seems aware of the siege at all. Something has to change, because if the Houthis continue on their current course, then the people of Taiz will be forced to endure a living hell. A city encircled. The city of Taiz wasn't the Houthis' first priority when they began their ongoing offensive in September of 2026. Taiz had long been a thorn in the side of the Houthi movements, which had controlled most of Yemen's densely populated west, including the capital city of Sana'a since the mid-2010s. Unlike the rest of the region, Taiz managed to hold out during the first few years of the Yemeni civil war, with government forces and allied tribes managing to st onewall the rebel advance. While the Houthis did take control of some of the city's outlying neighborhoods and establish fortified positions along a strip of no-man's land, those positions hadn't moved for a very long time prior to this year. In fact, the front line had stabilized to such an extent that the no-man's land had overgrown with vegetation while Yemeni troops in the city were able to consolidate their control over the city proper. Several road links connected Taiz to the outside world, including an especially important winding mountain path that led to the poor city of Aden. And with Taiz as acting as a stronghold and observation point and center of local military logistics, Yemeni forces were able to maintain control over the surrounding coastline, where the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden lap up against a strip of bear, nearly flat land, that several kilometers wide, curving around the southwestern edge of the coast. Looking down from Taiz and the surrounding highlands, Yemeni forces could monitor any sign of a surprise attack from the Houthis while keeping watch over the critical Bab al-Mandeb Strait. More than one-tenth of all global maritime trade moves through the Strait each year headed in and out of the Red Sea. During the relative quiet of the last several years in Yemen, that's all the government forces and their backers in Saudi Arabia needed to enjoy a reasonable level of confidence that the coastline was safe from Houthi interference. International trade ships could pass by, mostly unbothered, while the population of Taiz steadily expanded. In the 2000s, the city was home to less than half a million people, but by 2023, the urban population was estimated at around 940,000, counting the surrounding neighborhoods. That number has only continued to climb with the movements of the internally displaced population during the latest Houthi attack. When the Houthi assault began, Taiz immediately came under pressure, with intense rebel activity in the surrounding area and probing attacks against the city's defenses. But rather than attacking Taiz directly, the rebels focused on the coastline, where undermanned, under-resourced government units were forced into a progressive retreat. As the coastline came under control, the Houthis were able to move into southwestern highland areas that had previously been too dangerous to approach, since they could now take advantage of new angles of attack to flank relatively isolated defensive positions. Over the course of weeks, the Houthis chewed their way through Yemeni defenses in the hills and mountains, but they still never attacked Taiz directly. Instead, they cut into government territory south of the city, targeting the roads that blinked Taiz to the outside world. In this phase of the offensive, the Houthis benefited greatly from the confusion and the limitations of their adversaries. In the immediate aftermath of the Houthis coastal blitz, government-aligned forces were in disarray, trying to re-consolidate along the southern coastline, meaning that there were few reinforcements available to try and stabilize the highlands. Then, the Yemeni government and Saudi Arabia decided to focus on preparing a coastal counter-offensive to try and take back the territory that the Houthis had captured. But even though they managed to push the Houthis off of the Babel Mandeb Strait itself, they were unable to progress much further than that. The combination of new Houthi minefields in their path and harassment by the rebels from the nearby highlands was enough to blunt their momentum and keep them overext ended. Saudi Arabia's air force has been unable to stop the Houthis in highland areas, partly because the Houthis excel in asymmetric guerrilla-style fighting, aware they're harder to target, and partly because Riyadh's aircraft and pilots were unable to sustain a pace of dozens of air strikes per day. Finally, the Houthis were able to strike deals with local militias that remain intent on protecting individual towns and villages, but that were content to halt their positions and allow the Houthis to go around instead of picking a fight they were unlikely to win. Those militias may be in serious trouble if the Houthis do take Taiz and then move to stamp out any remaining resistance, but in the short term, they've managed to convince the Houthis to mostly ignore them. On the 4th of October, the Houthis severed the final roadlink between Taiz and Aden, capturing a key junction called al-Safir that driving government forces away from the surrounding area. Over the following two weeks, the rebels consolidated their holdings until they claimed an unbroken band of territory around the city's southern edge and encircled it completely. The civilians who'd been living in the surrounding highlands often had little choice but to get out before the rebels arrived. And those who weren't fortunate enough to be able to go south towards Aden were forced to take refuge in Taiz city itself. The rebels were able to sow confusion across government communication channels and interrupt supply lines, even despite the capture of several senior Houthi commanders who apparently believed their organization's false claims that Western Taiz had been captured and ended up driving into a government-controlled area where they surrendered. Most recently, the fighting is concentrated on Mount Hana, a large mountain right next to the city where government forces have managed to hold out under serious pressure. Battles in that area have been especially fierce, and both signs remain committed to their efforts to take the mountainside because if the Houthis do manage to capture the mountain, they'll be able to move their drones, mortars, and artillery into perfect positions to hit the city. Houthi leaders claim to have already captured the mountain, but that doesn't appear to be accurate, and nor have they managed to capture another, even tall, amount into the south, Mount Sabir. At this moment, the million-plus people in Taiz have no way out. The United Nations estimates that their number includes around 130,000 people who've been newly displaced since August. There are no serious efforts at the moment to deliver aid by air, either by Saudi Arabia, the United States, or any other nation, nor is that likely to change. The Houthis' air defenses aren't great, but there'd be more than able to target low-flying tactical airlifters attempting a targeted supply drop given that the rebels have shot down somewhere between 15 and 20 American Reaper drones over the last three years. Saudi airpower has proved woefully insufficient in targeting Houthi forces around the city, and while several of Saudi Arabia's allies have either sent airpower to assist rears or plan to do so, that international airpower is meant only to protect Saudi airspace. The people of Taiz are stuck, and right now, no outside force appears to be able to provide a rescue. A long siege. As we begin our discussion of what happens next, we should provide an important caveat. We're talking about the conflict in Yemen, and in Yemen, things are liable to change rather quickly as a matter of course. At times, fighting factions, trades, surges, and retreats like they're volle ying a tennis ball back and forth, and we do want to put an asterisk next to the rest of our discussion to keep in mind that the same thing could happen here. But for reasons we're about to describe, it's somewhat less likely that we'll see a radical shift in momentum around Taiz specifically. Instead, the city appears to be headed for a long and bitter siege, with the real questions at this stage being how long and how bitter the siege will ultimately be. That's because, right now, the Houthis and Yemeni forces appear to be grinding their way through a near stalemate on the tactical level. The Houthis have been able to encircle Taiz by using their advantages as a highly mobile force that is best when fighting an asymmetric war. They're very good at fighting in the highlands of western Yemen, where small Houthi units can move quickly in all directions, and they can operate like an amorphous swarm of fighters when they're on the attack. But they're less good at concentrating their forces and fighting head-to-head battles against a proper military, even a very underwhelming proper military like Yemen's. In those kinds of battles, the Houthis tend to struggle with disadvantages in heavy equipment, poor coordination by commanders, and at times chaos and their supply lines. They also have to gather in specific areas in large numbers for an extended period of time, meaning that they're sitting ducks for Saudi warplanes. And their troubles are made much worse by the fact Yemeni forces have zero intention of retreating from Taiz under the current circumstances. When the Yemeni military collapsed along the coast in September, they were fleeing in advance of a massive wave of Houthi fighters far larger than anything they'd been prepared for. And because the desert areas by the coast are so low and flat, individual government units in individual towns or outposts were at risk of being overrun from all directions. They had the opportunity to retreat towards safer defensive positions, aware they might have a chance at success, and so they did. In this case, however, the defenders of Taiz are already encircled. There's nowhere for them to run, even if they wanted to. And unlike some of the relatively empty coastal areas, there are a lot of innocent people in Taiz for them to defend. Those soldiers and their militia allies also know that the Houthis can be drawn into a long, costly siege in a place like this, and that the Houthi situation will only get worse if they manage to force their way into the city and begin a phase of close court- deserving combat. Finally, government troops know the fate that awaits them if the Houthis capture the city. They may be disappeared into the Houthis opaque detention system, where torture is thought to be prevalent, or they may just be killed outright, so those government troops are going to stay and fight largely because they have no other choice, and they'll be defending a city that wasn't sufficiently prepared with food or medicine for civilians, but that has turned into an ammunition dump by Yemeni forces over the course of several years. The local population is trying to help too, quoting a report from Al Jazeera on the subject, "At first, women volunteers came together to bake cookies for fighters on the front lines. As the fighting intensified, the women's initiatives expanded. What began with baking cookies and organizing food convoys to supply army kitchens gradually evolved into efforts to buy ammunition for fighters," end quote. Despite the Houthis claims that they're liberating the city, locals are well aware that the rebels are vacating food and medicine shipments on the expectations that civilians will go hungry or die of disease if the government doesn't capitulate. Fighting-age men have also signed up for city militias in large numbers, and as those people take up arms, they make it even more likely that the city would face bloody reprisals under Houthi rule, a fact that drives even further recruitment among ordinary people. But just like the government forces and civilians are holding out, the Houthis are intent on capturing the city sooner or later. The tactical value of Taiz is impossible to ignore, control the city, and the Houthis could maintain constant line of sight on the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden while launching much larger pincer-style attacks on the Bab El Mandeb Strait while opening the possibility of an assault on the government's de facto capital in the city of Aden. The group also understands that while it will be difficult to take the city outright, they can establish a long, ruinous siege from a position of relative safety if they can take the surrounding highlands. If they succeed in that effort, especially with the takeover of Mount Han, then they'll be shooting fish in a barrel similar to what Bosnian Serb forces achieved for nearly four years in the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s. And already the Houthis have demonstrated that despite heavy casualties, they 're going to keep pressure on Taiz while also carrying out operations elsewhere. Although casualty estimates vary widely at this stage in the fighting, it's likely that well over 1,000 Houthi fighters have already been killed just to establish their current position around the city. Nevertheless, they remain totally committed, pouring fighters and resources into a fight that will, by necessity, force them to absorb high casualties while trying to climb Mount Han. But the Houthis haven't had to commit all of their forces to Taiz either. While the siege has been developing, Houthi forces have launched numerous missile and drone attacks into Saudi Arabia, hitting a range of Saudi airports and killing 12 people in a single strike on a passenger terminal at Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport. The group has kept up the pressure against Saudi energy facilities with the leadership of Saudi Aramco, the state oil company, telling staff on Wednesday that they should evacuate the company's headquarters in the city of Dahran. The situation is getting so serious that the US State Department has ordered some of its diplomats to depart Saudi Arabia, along with their families, also on Wednesday. In Yemen, Houthis have been able to strike the presidential palace in the city of Aden and carried out a particularly costly missile strike on a training camp for government security forces, where at least 73 young trainees were killed and over 200 more were injured. All of that is to say, Houthis may have a major task ahead of them in Taiz. But the siege, by itself, isn't enough to keep them fully occupied. According to Yemeni Brigadier General Mohammed al-Mamoudi, speaking to the new Arab, Yemeni forces are planning a counter-offensive to try and break the siege. According to al-Mamoudi, it's critically important to protect the city, quote, "If Taiz falls, it means the fall of the Yemeni Republic and the legitimate government. It is the first and last stronghold of the Republic. If it falls, that will carry huge symbolic significance," end quote. But it is going to be exceptionally difficult for a Yemeni counter-offensive to break through. Since the peak years of the Civil War, the Houthis have been at their absolute best while defending and counter-attacking in mountainous areas. Right now, the rebels have tens of thousands of fighters concentrated in the same mounting territory that any government column would have to break through. Airpar from Saudi Arabia will only make a limited difference as Houthi forces won't need to concentrate in particularly large groups in order to launch hit-and-run attacks against the column as it approaches. And as the siege continues, the situation in Taiz is only going to get worse. On Thursday, 22 October, Amnesty International's regional director Heber Moray ev warned that, quote, "civilians in Taiz find themselves trapped and facing severe shortages of essential goods, including food, water and medicine," end quote. According to the United Nations, medical facilities nearly out of critical medicine, fuel and oxygen supplies, while the city's supply of flour and unprocessed wheat could run out in as little as three weeks. City officials and residents report that clean drinking water is running out, fresh food has basically disappeared, and ordinary people have mostly run out of cooking fuel. Make it matters worse, the city's normal trash-dumping grounds are too dangerous right now, and rubbish is piling up along major roads, raising the risk of disease spread and water contamination at a time when, according to the World Health Organization, nearly 700 cholera cases have been reported already just in the month of October. UNICEF has identified 52,000 acutely malnourished children in the city of Taiz, and now that there's no way to access the city by road, UNICEF's deliveries of a specialized refeeding food have been completely cut off. The rest of the world, meanwhile, is nowhere to be found. The European Union, several Middle Eastern states and other governments have called on the Houthis to end the siege, but none have taken action. In a world where humanitarian aid budgets are reaching critical lows, trying to balance too many crises while long-running contributions slash their support, it's unlikely that any country is going to step in. Instead, the siege of Taiz is likely to get much worse in the coming weeks and months, and even if Yemeni forces do hold out, resistance will only prolong the humanitarian crisis. Over a million people in that city need a miracle, but by all current indicators, that miracle just ain't coming.