More than 86,000 displaced Yemenis have reached Taiz since the start of the escalation

More than 86,000 Yemenis have arrived in the city of Taiz since the start of the current escalation of fighting, a government agency announced on Monday. According to Al Jazeera’s reporting from Taiz, the city has received the largest number of displaced people, despite its limited resources, as fighting expands on the battlefronts in the southern countryside of the Taiz governorate between the Houthis and government forces.

Local authorities are scrambling to secure tents, food and emergency supplies for the newcomers. Taiz is a city that has lived under a suffocating siege since 2015 and connects with the southern governorates only through a single road. Many of the arriving families have been displaced several times during the 12-year conflict, and most consist of the elderly, children and women — vulnerable groups that have so far received little or no aid.

According to the United Nations, displacement has accelerated since September 3, with more than 100,000 people displaced during September, most of them heading toward the Taiz and Lahj governorates. UNICEF separately reported that more than 57,000 children were displaced in just two weeks as a result of the ongoing conflict, left without access to essential services — while the agency warned that the renewed escalation could deepen the humanitarian crisis affecting around 12.2 million children in need of humanitarian assistance in Yemen.

The displacement wave follows the Houthi offensive along the Red Sea coast, which included the capture of the port city of Mokha and the tightening of control over the strategic Bab al-Mandeb strait — a key point for global trade and Saudi oil exports, at a time when the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively blocked by Iranian forces.

Fighting in Yemen reignited in July as a result of the broader US–Iran war, ending the period of relative calm that had prevailed since the 2022 ceasefire. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has warned that the scale of displacement is growing rapidly and that civilians are bearing the brunt of the renewed front-line fighting, airstrikes and shelling.

Source: Al Jazeera — https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2026/9/21/iran-war-live-tehran-warns-us-against-new-strikes-fighting-rages-in-yemen