Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement has seized significant territory along the country’s Red Sea coast since late July, pushing forces of the internationally recognized government steadily southward.
The port town of Mokha fell to Houthi forces in September, forcing residents like Mohammed Musleh, 46, and his family to flee their home with almost no warning and no time to gather belongings.
Musleh’s wife, Muna, told reporters that Houthi fighters gave the family virtually no time to evacuate, saying “The Houthis told us to leave, basically immediately. We had no time to take anything.”
The couple and their two young daughters are now sheltering with relatives in Aden, the largest city still under government control in southern Yemen, hoping for a return that appears increasingly unlikely.
Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Council, insisted that recent battlefield losses would not change the government’s stated goal of restoring state authority across the entire country.
The Houthis are currently pushing toward the strategically vital Kahboub Mountains, a range that overlooks areas surrounding the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key waterway used for Saudi oil exports.
The city of Taiz, under government control and situated roughly 40 kilometers northeast of the mountains, now faces the prospect of a renewed siege, with residents describing growing fear and rising prices as merchants stop entering the city.
One Taiz resident named Rania, who withheld her surname for safety reasons, said “we fear that if the Houthis tighten their grip on the city of Taiz, we will find ourselves under siege again,” recalling the “suffocating blockade of 2015 and 2016, when the entry of food and goods was cut off.”
The World Health Organization reported that at least 674 people have been killed and 2,998 injured since fighting escalated in August, with the actual toll likely higher as clashes continue.
The International Organization for Migration confirmed that more than 132,000 people have been displaced by the renewed conflict, with over 90,000 seeking refuge across the governorates of Aden, Lahj, Abyan, Al Dhale’e, and Marib.
Armen Yedgaryan, the UN refugee agency’s Yemen representative, warned that intensifying fighting could drive further displacement beyond Yemen’s borders into Djibouti, Somalia, and other neighboring countries.
Yedgaryan described worsening conditions for those already displaced, stating that “conditions for displaced people are increasingly severe as they arrive at already congested displacement sites in urgent need of shelter, food, clean water, healthcare and protection.”
Even before this latest escalation, more than 5.2 million people were already internally displaced inside Yemen, while around 22 million people across the country require some form of humanitarian assistance.
Alison Bottomley, an advocacy adviser with the Norwegian Refugee Council in Yemen, visited the Al-Kud displacement camp in Abyan governorate and found that 317 families had arrived since fighting began, swelling the site’s population from 1,460 to 2,629 people.
Bottomley reported that a man named Mustapha, displaced from Mawza seven years ago, was hosting 22 families in his shelter, with the group sharing a single latrine and eating one communal meal every other day.
She noted grimly that no external funding exists to support the new arrivals, with the camp’s population surviving “purely off the generosity of other IDP families.”
Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi released a video message claiming that civilians in western and southern provinces were not the movement’s target, but Yemeni political analyst Hisham Al-Omeisy dismissed the statement as meaningless.
Al-Omeisy told reporters that “the Houthis may measure this offensive in kilometers gained and territory seized, but Yemenis are measuring it in homes abandoned, families torn apart, and lives lost.”
He added that “there is something profoundly cruel about pursuing military gains while ordinary Yemenis are once again being condemned to fear, hunger and displacement,” warning that Yemen’s civilians “cannot continue to be treated as collateral damage in the Houthis’ pursuit of power.”
