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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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Arab World

UN Says 70% of Those Killed in Gaza Were Children and Women, Deplores ‘Daily Cruelty’

A boy walks as displaced Palestinians make their way after fleeing the northern part of Gaza amid an Israeli military operation, in Gaza City, November 12, 2024. (Reuters)
A boy walks as displaced Palestinians make their way after fleeing the northern part of Gaza amid an Israeli military operation, in Gaza City, November 12, 2024. (Reuters)
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UN Says 70% of Those Killed in Gaza Were Children and Women, Deplores ‘Daily Cruelty’

A boy walks as displaced Palestinians make their way after fleeing the northern part of Gaza amid an Israeli military operation, in Gaza City, November 12, 2024. (Reuters)
A boy walks as displaced Palestinians make their way after fleeing the northern part of Gaza amid an Israeli military operation, in Gaza City, November 12, 2024. (Reuters)

The UN human rights office has verified that close to 70% of those killed in Gaza by airstrikes, shelling and other hostile actions were children and women, a senior UN rights official said.

Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ilze Brands Kehris told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that "the age group most represented in verified fatalities was children from 5 to 9 years old."

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, more than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 100,000 injured since Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7, 2023 attacks in southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and saw some 250 taken hostage, about 100 of whom are still being held. The Gaza ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians but has said the majority of those killed are women and children.

Kehris said monitoring by the Geneva-based office of the UN high commissioner for human rights indicates that the unprecedented level of killing and injury "is a direct consequence of the parties’ choices of methods and means of warfare, and their failure to comply with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law."

"The pattern of strikes indicates that the Israeli Defense Forces have systematically violated fundamental principles of international humanitarian law: distinction, proportionality and precautions in attack," she said. "Palestinian armed groups have also conducted hostilities in ways that have likely contributed to harm to civilians."

Kehris criticized Israel for destroying Gaza’s civilian infrastructure including hospitals, schools, electricity grids, water and sewage facilities, which are protected under international law.

This "contributes directly to the famine risk," which hunger experts have warned is likely imminent in northern Gaza, she said, also citing the constant and continuing Israeli interference with the entry and distribution of humanitarian aid.

Over the past five weeks, Kehris said, Israeli airstrikes have led to "massive civilian fatalities in northern Gaza," especially of women, children and older, sick and disabled people. Many were reportedly trapped by Israeli military restrictions and attacks on escape routes, she said.

The UN human rights office has warned Israel against targeting locations sheltering significant numbers of civilians, and also against attacking the three major hospitals "while unlawfully restricting the entry and distribution of humanitarian assistance to northern Gaza," Kehris said.

‘Daily cruelty’

Meanwhile, Joyce Msuya, the UN’s top humanitarian official, said "acts reminiscent of the gravest international crimes" are being committed in Gaza where Palestinians face increasing hunger, starvation and potential famine – putting most of the blame on Israel.

Calling the situation in the territory after more than a year of war "catastrophic," Msuya told the Security Council that "the latest offensive that Israel started in North Gaza last month is an intensified, extreme and accelerated version of the horrors of the past year."

She accused Israeli authorities of blocking aid from entering the northernmost part of Gaza, where she said around 75,000 people remain with dwindling food and water, and supplies have been cut off while people are being pushed south. Israel says it is battling Hamas fighters who have regrouped there.

"Shelters, homes and schools have been burned and bombed to the ground," Msuya said. "Numerous families remain trapped under rubble because fuel for digging equipment is being blocked by the Israeli authorities and first responders have been blocked from reaching them."

She said hospitals have been attacked and ambulances destroyed.

Msuya stressed that "the daily cruelty we see in Gaza seems to have no limits," pointing to the town of Beit Hanoun in the north which Israel has besieged for a month and where the UN delivered the first food supplies and water on Monday.

"But today, Israeli soldiers forcibly displaced people from those same areas," she said.

"Conditions of life across Gaza are unfit for human survival," Msuya said, pointing to insufficient food and shelter items needed for the coming winter.

She stressed that problems including the violent armed looting of UN convoys, driven by the collapse of law and order, can be solved "with the right political will."

The Security Council meeting was called by Guyana, Switzerland, Algeria and Slovenia following last Friday’s report by hunger experts that called the humanitarian situation throughout Gaza "extremely grave and rapidly deteriorating" and warned that there is a strong likelihood of imminent famine in parts of the north.

Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon called the report’s claims "baseless and slanderous," accusing the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification network, or IPC whose independent Famine Review Committee issued Friday’s alert, of prioritizing "smearing Israel over actually helping those in need."

He told reporters before the council meeting that the situation in Gaza, including the north, has shown improvement since October. "Yet, instead of recognizing this, the IPC chooses to ignore facts, pushing a narrative detached from reality and hostile to the truth," he said.