Often, he tells them he is already full, even when he has gone without food. The 46-year-old teacher has not received a salary in years. Displaced three or four times since Yemen’s war began, he lives with his wife and five children in a single room in Taiz and is more than a year behind on rent.
Now, a new escalation that began in early September has forced nearly 134,000 people from their homes, including an estimated 73,000 children, according to UNICEF, leaving many more families deciding which meals to skip. Yemen’s latest round of fighting has redrawn front lines after more than a decade of war, fuelling hunger and displacement. The country has been effectively divided since the Iran-aligned Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.
The Houthis control the north and west, where most Yemenis live, while the internationally recognised government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia, holds most of the south and east. On September 3, fighting erupted between the Houthis and government forces when the Houthis launched a major offensive west of Taiz. Within days, Houthi fighters entered Mocha, and they have since taken control of almost all of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, down to the Bab al-Mandeb strait, a chokepoint for global shipping.
Saudi Arabia has responded with hundreds of air strikes, and the Houthis have launched drone and missile attacks on Saudi territory. The World Health Organization (WHO) says 838 people have been killed and more than 3,600 injured since early August, when the Houthis began striking government forces. Most of the toll has come since the ground offensive began on September 3, and in the week to September 26 alone, 164 people were killed.
UNICEF has verified that at least 15 children have been killed and 14 injured since September 3, and three more are reported missing. Ruqqaya Saeed is 25 and a mother of eight. She fled Zaghar, in the Maqbanah area west of Taiz where the Houthi offensive began, facing what she describes as rockets, shells and the terror of landmines all at once.
They survive on what charitable people give them. She borrowed money to buy a tarpaulin for shelter, and rainwater has already soaked through it twice, drenching their clothes. We don’t have water for them, not even clean water,” she says.
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