The city of Taiz is rapidly emerging as the most important battlefront in Yemen’s reignited civil war, pitting the Iran-allied Houthis against the internationally recognised government.
Houthi forces have encircled Taiz in recent weeks by cutting its main road south to Aden, causing widespread displacement and worsening a humanitarian crisis.
Any Houthi victory in Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city, would mark one of the biggest turning points in the country’s long civil war, which resumed this summer after a four-year truce.
Taiz city has an estimated population of almost 600,000, said Katja Juric, Aden-based head of programmes for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
Government sources said 80,000 had fled in the latest fighting.
Taiz has been on the frontline between the Houthis and the government since the first days of the conflict that started in early 2015 and has long been seen as a bastion of opposition to the Iran-allied group.
It is the last major urban stronghold of anti-Houthi forces in the southern highland area of Yemen: the rugged hills above both Aden, where the internationally recognised government is based, and the flat coastal plain around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
A Houthi takeover of Taiz would make it much harder for government forces to maintain their counterattack around Bab el-Mandeb and keep the Houthis at arm’s length from Aden.
It would also mean a resounding symbolic defeat for the government and the military coalition of Saudi-backed Yemeni forces fighting the Houthis.
