Down in Taiz, Yemen, the clash between Saudi‑backed forces and Houthi rebels has turned the city’s slopes into a living war zone.
The ever‑present buzz of a drone often signals an impending attack. A soldier I met during the day recalled, ‘This is the first drone,’ and added that it was usually followed by a barrage of strikes whose exact landing spots remain uncertain. Within minutes of the drone’s alert, the thud of mortar shells echoed through the hills, leaving homes abandoned as families fled the sound of gunfire.
The city’s front line is a fluid line of sight from the high‑ground outlooks that border the south‑west coast. Between a network of checkpoints and no‑man’s lands, pro‑government troops struggle to hold a foothold while the Houthis push further from the recently seized port of Mokha. Their capture of the Bab al‑Mandab Strait has amplified global concerns for shipping and oil supplies.
At the foot of the mountain, a local named Ali has remained at his farm, tending goats under mortar fire, because the loss of his livestock would mean immediate starvation. In a hospital corridor, a 12‑year‑old girl named Ghana Nabeel lies unconscious with brain damage after a shrapnel storm hit her herd‑herding area.
The UN cites a displacement figure of 130,000 Yemenis this month alone, and predicts an additional 100,000 may be uprooted in the coming months as hostilities intensify. Families, such as Maryam Saleh’s, are walking barefoot with ten‑year‑old children across miles of bombardments, while others like Fatma Mohammed Saleh, who can no longer walk, crawl for days in search of safety, only to finding themselves in a makeshift camp of tents under a starlit sky.
The relentless sirens of the front‑line city remind us that behind every headline are ordinary citizens fighting for a chance to survive—yet another chapter in Yemen’s prolonged civil war. The future of Taiz remains uncertain as the Houthis’ advances threaten to tighten the siege around government strongholds.
