Fighting on Taiz's western hills threatens the city's road south
Government-aligned forces and Houthi fighters are battling over high ground west of Taiz, above the Yemeni city's route south. Government forces still hold the centre, while Houthi positions are to the north and east. Fighting around the city has driven families from their homes, while the next movement of the front remains unresolved.
Geopolitics··Morning
Forces contest the heights west of Taiz
Government-aligned forces and fighters of Yemen's Houthi movement are battling around Taiz, the city in southwestern Yemen held by the government side. The fiercest recent fighting described from the city is on its western approaches, where hills overlook the road leading south. Houthi positions are also to the north and east. Government forces say they have widened operations across the province, and a correspondent in Taiz relayed their claim to have taken some elevated ground. Those claims do not establish a new line of control. The two accounts do establish that the contest for high ground remains active near the city and its route out. The government-held centre has not itself changed hands in these accounts. The western hills matter because they look down on the route away from the city, but an overlooking position is not the same as control of the road.[1], [2]
Mokha's fall changed the western approach
The Houthis seized Mokha, a Red Sea port roughly 85 kilometres west of Taiz, on 10 September. The port sits near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, while the battle for hills nearer Taiz bears on access between the city and the south. On the road from Aden, the government-held city to the south, a BBC team passed about 30 checkpoints run by different commanders on the government side. The team heard a drone and then explosions during its trip toward the front, without being able to determine where the blasts landed. The timing and outcome of any new offensive remain uncertain. Mokha's capture and the present contest near Taiz are stages of the same western front, not evidence that the southern road has been cut. The many checkpoints also show that travel on the government side passes through areas managed by different commanders.[1]
Families leave homes near the front
The fighting is already moving civilians. Ali, a resident near the front, said he sent his children to a displacement camp amid mortar fire, while he stayed with his wife and sisters to care for their animals. At a hospital in Taiz, both fighters and civilians were being treated. The family of 12-year-old Ghana Nabeel said shrapnel hit her head while she was herding goats; a doctor reported brain damage. At the al-Monig camp south of the city, residents said 200 families had arrived from Mokha in ten days. The UN refugee agency reported on 22 September that fighting had displaced more than 130,000 people across Yemen that month and warned that another 100,000 might have to leave over the following three months. The family's account of Ghana's injury and the doctor's assessment describe one child's harm, while the UN figure measures displacement across Yemen rather than casualties in Taiz. Those are different measures of the same conflict's human cost.[1]
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