Inside Yemen's front-line city as Houthis battle for control

ByNawal Al-Maghafi Senior international investigations correspondent, Reporting fromTaiz, Yemen.

Key points

• We travelled to Taiz from Aden in the south, where Yemen's internationally recognised Presidential Leadership Council and administration are based.
• The Houthis signed an "action plan" with the UN in 2022 pledging to end the practice.
• Regarding 20km south of Taiz, at the al-Monig displacement camp, families who had fled Mokha and villages hit by fighting were arriving, among hundreds of tents.
• "Two mortars landed here on my property, " remarked Ali, sitting outside his home with a herd of goats, concerning 1km (0.6 miles) from the front line.
• The group took control of a swathe of territory overlooking the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait – a crucial shipping corridor linking Europe and Asia.

"This is the first drone, " remarked the soldier accompanying us in south-western Yemen. "It's usually followed by an attack."

In practice, the buzzing sound overhead obtained louder as we took cover under the bushes, before climbing back into the vehicle and driving away.

Though it was unclear where they landed, within regarding 10 minutes, the loud thuds of strikes followed, one after another.

It is hard to tell where the front line begins in the mountains south-west of the city of Taiz.

Saudi-backed pro-government forces are battling to push back Houthi fighters. This person swept down the coast of the Red Sea earlier this month, taking control of a key shipping chokepoint and escalating Yemen's civil war.

We travelled with administration forces from Taiz through checkpoints to the line where their control ends and no man's land begins, so as to see the fighting up close.

Homes are scattered throughout the slopes, but numerous stand abandoned after families fled to escape the fighting.

It is eerily quiet, no sound of the cars or motorbikes that are continuously whizzing through the city. All you can hear is the bleating of livestock and the sound of incoming and outgoing fire.

He informed me he had sent his children to a displacement camp as they could no longer cope with the shelling and gunfire. He had stayed with his wife and sisters to look after their animals.

"I am terrified, " he remarked, "but I have no choice, we will all go hungry without our animals and die anyway."

He offered only his first name, fearful of repercussions if the Houthis take over the area in the days ahead. Contacts from the Houthi side have informed us they are consolidating troops, preparing for a major offensive. When we asked administration forces concerning this they noted they are aware and were preparing too.

At the closest checkpoint to the front line, we met some fighters who had just returned from positions high on the mountain, just a few hundred metres from advancing Houthis. One of them remarked the bodies of 18 administration soldiers lay in an area his unit could fire throughout but not reach.

"We shoot over them, but we can't pull them out, " he remarked.

After a ceasefire that had largely held for four years unravelled, fighting around Taiz has intensified since the Houthis seized the strategic Red Sea port of Mokha, 85km to the west of the city, on 10 September.

In practice, the group took control of a swathe of territory overlooking the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait – a crucial shipping corridor linking Europe and Asia. This contributed to a rise in oil rates as fears rose of further disruption to supplies from the region.

Taiz is Yemen's third biggest city and its cultural capital, and is home to close to a million individuals. It sits at a vital intersection between Houthi-controlled areas in northern Yemen and government-held ones in the south – and is hemmed in by front lines in a number of directions.

While Houthi positions lie to its north and east, administration forces hold the centre of Taiz. The fiercest recent fighting has been on the western approaches, where the two sides are contesting high ground overlooking the city's route south. If the Houthis secure these areas, administration forces could find it much harder to retake Mokha.

Regarding 30 checkpoints along the route marked stretches of road controlled by different commanders – a clear sign of the fractured make-up of the forces fighting on the administration side.

As we neared the city, ambulances began to pass us. We counted at least five within half an hour, heading towards Taiz's main hospital. It was clear that we were driving into a city at the heart of a brutal battle.

We arrived after dark. The shops were lit, the restaurants were packed and children were playing in the streets. But every so often, other sounds broke through – the thud of shelling and the crack of gunfire from the mountains around the city.

Taiz has been a major battleground in the country's devastating civil war. After ousting the administration from Sanaa in 2015, the Houthis attempted to additionally seize control of Taiz but were driven out of most of the city by local militiamen.

Now, in their latest offensive, Houthis are making extensive employ of drones alongside other weapons.

Their main outside supplier is Iran. It has provided weapons, funding and military advice, according to Saudi Arabia, Western countries and UN experts. Iran, nevertheless, has previously denied supplying weapons to the Houthis and states it only supports them politically.

There have been persistent reports over plenty of years of the Houthis recruiting child soldiers, and a administration soldier informed us he had faced them on the front line.

"It's tough to look at a Yemeni child and shoot at him. But then they are pointing the gun at you and you have to defend yourself, " he remarked.

For context, the Houthis signed an "action plan" with the UN in 2022 pledging to end the practice. The BBC has additionally spoken to teenagers serving with administration forces.

Meanwhile a coalition led by Saudi Arabia is backing the Yemeni administration, and providing it with weapons. While the Houthis have introduced drones and missiles at cities and infrastructure in south-western Saudi Arabia, the Saudi military has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Houthi positions on the Red Sea coast.

In the evening, at al-Thawra hospital in Taiz, casualties from the front lines were being brought into an intensive care unit where every bed we saw was occupied.

Some patients were fighters, others were civilians. Twelve-year-old Ghana Nabeel had been herding goats when shrapnel struck her head. Her family remarked an incoming Houthi mortar had landed nearby.

She lay unconscious, her head wrapped in bandages, her face swollen and bruised. Her family were waiting at her bedside to learn what life might be like if she wakes up.

For context, a doctor informed me the injury had damaged her brain. "She will never be the same again, " he remarked.

We were informed that 200 families had arrived in the previous 10 days.

Maryam Saleh, not her real name, had come a week earlier from Mokha with her husband and five children. The youngest is aged seven. Maryam sat weaving a hat to sell so she could purchase food for the day.

"We walked barefoot and we didn't carry anything with us, just our children, " she informed me.

Her nephew was killed by shrapnel from a mortar as they fled, she remarked. He had been walking behind her. She described clashes and sniping both ahead of and behind the family and remarked she then saw armed men on the mountain.

"We thought we were finished, " she remarked. The children were screaming and crying, but the family kept walking, she continued.

In short, inside Yemen' s front-line city as Houthis battle for control is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.