Yemen: UN says more than 250,000 have fled renewed fighting, with 32 civilians confirmed killed in Taiz governorate

More than 250,000 people have fled renewed fighting in Yemen, the United Nations said on 20 October, with about half of those recently uprooted sheltering in Taiz, where UN officials describe access as essentially blocked. The figure is higher than the more than 230,000 displaced that the UN reported on 15 October, as Geopolitiki wrote in Yemen: UN says more than 230,000 displaced since August, with food out in Taiz and 700 trauma patients in a week at some health facilities.

According to UN News, fighting resumed in September between the Houthi movement (Ansar Allah) and the internationally recognised Government based in Aden, ending a period of relative calm that had held since the 2022 truce.

Civilian toll in Taiz

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said the Houthis had closed the only supply route linking Taiz to Aden, putting civilians at grave risk. He appealed to Houthi fighters, whom he said had encircled Taiz City, to let aid in immediately. Türk confirmed that 32 civilians had been killed across the governorate, among them 14 children and nine women, and warned that the danger of death and injury grows as fighting moves closer to densely populated areas.

Food, water and health

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said wheat flour stocks in the affected areas of Taiz are nearly exhausted, and that ten of the governorate’s 16 districts are already at emergency levels of food insecurity. Akhil Iyer, UNICEF Representative in Yemen, briefing journalists from Aden, called Taiz the number one concern at the moment. He said many of the displaced have fled more than once and arrive with almost nothing, and that clean water is scarce. UNICEF had pre-positioned therapeutic food before the fighting escalated but could not deliver it to health facilities because all routes were closed.

The World Health Organization’s spokesperson, Tarik Jasarevic, said 12 hospitals in Taiz have about four days of fuel left, oxygen cylinders are in daily deficit, and 115 of 127 essential medicines are stocked for about a week or less. Yemen is also dealing with cholera and measles outbreaks, plus suspected diphtheria and dengue cases, according to the UN briefing.

Matthew Saltmarsh, spokesperson for the UN refugee agency UNHCR, said access problems prevent aid teams from reaching those most in need, although protection work continues where access allows. About 65,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in Yemen, most from Somalia and Ethiopia, also need urgent support.

Earlier warnings

On 14 October the WFP warned that the fighting had cut off aid to about 800,000 people, a statement covered in Yemen: WFP says fighting has cut aid to 800,000 people, most of them in Taiz. The casualty and displacement figures in this article come from UN agencies as reported by UN News on 20 October; the Houthi movement and the Aden government have not been quoted here, as no statement from either was available in that report.