Oxfam warns Taiz crisis becoming 'unmanageable' as Houthi siege chokes city

Heavy fighting has raged around Taiz's old airport this week, damaging a densely populated residential area and tightening a siege that has largely cut the Yemeni city of more than 900,000 people off from most supply routes. Houthi forces have encircled Taiz, and Oxfam aid workers in the country warned that the humanitarian crisis is becoming unmanageable as water, fuel and fresh food run out. The World Food Programme said wheat flour reserves in the city were nearly exhausted as of mid-October.

Fatma Jaffar, Oxfam's Yemen-based advocacy manager, said local staff described an almost total siege, with all main entrances blocked, clashes continuing and casualties very high. She said hospitals are struggling without medicines and that wounded people cannot be transferred out of the city because of the blockade, while even residents who have money are unable to buy food. According to Jaffar, supplies in the markets are becoming very limited, no fuel has entered Taiz for two or three weeks, and drinking water has become a massive problem.

Prices have rocketed: a 20-litre container of petrol that cost about $20 before the crisis now sells for $80 on the hidden market, and potato prices have doubled. Jaffar said people are searching for apples and cannot find any fresh fruit, basic commodities are missing, and garbage is piling up because it cannot be taken outside the city and is being burned instead, with aid workers anticipating diseases such as cholera. The Houthi focus on Taiz reflects the city's strategic importance, but the level of resistance inside it may absorb the group's resources and weaken its response elsewhere.

Oxfam in London called on the UK to send extra humanitarian aid, noting that Britain has allocated just 104 million pounds for Yemen in each of the next three years, down from 196 million pounds in 2020. US aid to the country has been virtually wiped out and Germany, another leading funder, has halved its programme, leaving donors to cover only 23% of the cost of the UN humanitarian relief programme for Yemen this year. Pressure is growing on Saudi Arabia, itself cash-strapped by the cost of war, to make up the shortfall; in the Trump administration's fiscal year 2027 budget request, the state department sought no economic support or development assistance specifically for Yemen, compared with roughly $760m in total US aid during the last year of Joe Biden's presidency.

The UK government said on Tuesday it would allocate an unspecified sum in extra military help to Saudi Arabia to protect its airports and infrastructure, but London has yet to decide whether to back a much more robust military response, including support for the possible deployment of foreign ground troops to Yemen. The Halo Trust, the world's largest humanitarian landmine-clearance organisation, said 30 of its staff were among hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped inside the city. UN diplomats are still mediating between the two sides, but there is no sign that either the Houthis or the internationally recognised government is ready for a ceasefire, let alone a long-term settlement.