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Relief in Yemen’s Taiz as 8-Year Houthi Siege Is Partially Broken

The gas tankers arrive in Taiz after the Houthi siege is partially broken. (Saba)
The gas tankers arrive in Taiz after the Houthi siege is partially broken. (Saba)
    Aden, Riyadh – Ali Rabih and Abdulhadi Habtor
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Relief in Yemen’s Taiz as 8-Year Houthi Siege Is Partially Broken

The gas tankers arrive in Taiz after the Houthi siege is partially broken. (Saba)
The gas tankers arrive in Taiz after the Houthi siege is partially broken. (Saba)

The Iran-backed Houthi militias’ eight-year siege of Yemen’s southwestern city of Taiz was partially broken on Thursday.

A cooking gas shipment was delivered to the city through an under-construction road, revealed official government sources.

Two tankers, loaded with 25 tons of cooking gas, managed to access the city through the al-Mokha-al-Kadha road.

The Houthis have been barring access to the city through main roads.

Director of the Yemen Oil and Gas Corporation Taiz branch, Bilal al-Qumeiri said the shipment will help meet the needs of the people and ease their suffering, government media quoted him as saying.

He revealed that shipments will be rerouted through this strategic road once its construction is completed.

He said living conditions in the liberated directorates will significantly improve once the gas is provided, especially with the advent of the holy fasting month of Ramadan that begins later this month.

Member of the Presidential Leadership Council Tariq Saleh stressed that the development was significant in easing the oppressive Houthi siege on Taiz and facilitating the movement of citizens and goods to liberated regions.

The new 14 km route connects Taiz to al-Mokha through the al-Kadha area. The route was funded by the United Arab Emirates and overseen by the humanitarian cell of the national resistance, reported Yemeni media.

The terrorist Houthis have been imposing their siege on Taiz, Yemen’s most populous city, for eight years. They have been blocking the al-Houban-Aden main road that is used in trade and travel.

The Houthis have been allowing the passage of goods, oil derivatives and humanitarian needs strictly through very steep roads that are accident-prone.

The siege has forced the locals and businesses to seek treacherous and poorly-maintained roads to go about their daily lives, sometimes taking several hours to reach their destination when prior to the siege, such a journey would have taken mere minutes.

Saleh toured the area after the siege was broken, praising the efforts that led to the paving and opening of the new route.

Construction of the route had kicked off in October and is expected to be complete in the coming months.

The Houthis have rejected all United Nations efforts and proposals in the past months to lift the siege in spite receiving several gains from humanitarian agreements that have been implemented, such as reaping benefits from the return of imports to Hodeidah ports and resuming flights at Sanaa airport.

The Saudi Development and Reconstruction Program for Yemen (SDRPY) had inaugurated in May 2022 maintenance operations of the Haija-al-Abed route that connects Taiz to the Lahj and Aden provinces. Work is still undergoing. The 9 km route is vital to over five million Yemenis.

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US Pulls Out of Two More Bases in Syria, Worrying Kurdish Forces

SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)
SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)
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US Pulls Out of Two More Bases in Syria, Worrying Kurdish Forces

SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)
SDF forces in Syria. (AFP file)

US forces have pulled out of two more bases in northeastern Syria, visiting Reuters reporters found, accelerating a troop drawdown that the commander of US-backed Syrian Kurdish forces said was allowing a resurgence of ISIS.

Reuters reporters who visited the two bases in the past week found them mostly deserted, both guarded by small contingents of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) - the Kurdish-led military group that Washington has backed in the fight against ISIS for a decade.

Cameras used on bases occupied by the US-led military coalition had been taken down, and razor wire on the outer perimeters had begun to sag.

A Kurdish politician who lives on one base said there were no longer US troops there. SDF guards at the second base said troops had left recently but declined to say when. The Pentagon declined to comment.

It is the first confirmation on the ground by reporters that the US has withdrawn from Al-Wazir and Tel Baydar bases in Hasaka province. It brings to at least four the number of bases in Syria US troops have left since President Donald Trump took office.

Trump’s administration said this month it will scale down its military presence in Syria to one base from eight in parts of northeastern Syria that the SDF controls. The New York Times reported in April that troops might be reduced from 2,000 to 500 in the drawdown.

The SDF did not respond to questions about the current number of troops and open US bases in northeastern Syria.

But SDF commander Mazloum Abdi, who spoke to Reuters at another US base, Al Shadadi, said the presence of a few hundred troops on one base would be "not enough" to contain the threat of ISIS.

"The threat of ISIS has significantly increased recently. But this is the US military’s plan. We’ve known about it for a long time ... and we’re working with them to make sure there are no gaps and we can maintain pressure on ISIS," he said.

Abdi spoke to Reuters on Friday, hours after Israel launched its air war on Iran. He declined to comment on how the new Israel-Iran war would affect Syria, saying simply that he hoped it would not spill over there and that he felt safe on a US base.

Hours after the interview, three Iranian-made missiles targeted the Al Shadadi base and were shot down by US defense systems, two SDF security sources said.

ISIS ACTIVE IN SYRIAN CITIES

ISIS ruled vast swathes of Iraq and Syria from 2014 to 2017 during Syria’s civil war, imposing a vision of religious rule under which it beheaded locals in city squares, sex-trafficked members of the Yazidi minority and executed foreign journalists and aid workers.

The group, from its strongholds in Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, also launched deadly attacks in European and Middle Eastern countries.

A US-led military Coalition of more than 80 countries waged a yearslong campaign to defeat the group and end its territorial control, supporting Iraqi forces and the SDF.

But ISIS has been reinvigorated since the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in December at the hands of separate opposition factions.

Abdi said ISIS cells had become active in several Syrian cities, including Damascus, and that a group of foreign extremists who once battled the Syrian regime had joined its ranks. He did not elaborate.

He said ISIS had seized weapons and ammunition from Syrian regime depots in the chaos after Assad's fall.

Several Kurdish officials told Reuters that ISIS had already begun moving more openly around US bases which had recently been shuttered, including near the cities of Deir Ezzor and Raqqa, once strongholds for the extremist group.

In areas the SDF controls east of the Euphrates River, ISIS has waged a series of attacks and killed at least 10 SDF fighters and security forces, Abdi said. Attacks included a roadside bomb targeting a convoy of oil tankers on a road near the US base where he gave the interview.