Yemen sees widest clashes in weeks as displacement nears 200,000

Yemen's army and Houthi militias engaged in fierce fighting across Taiz and Lahej provinces on Thursday, marking the most intense military escalation since the group seized Mokha on September 10, according to military statements and Anadolu's monitoring. The clashes concentrated on multiple fronts including Tor Al-Baha, Bani Bakari and Himyar, where government warplanes carried out six airstrikes on Houthi positions while ground forces repelled large-scale assaults, military officials said. The Tor Al-Baha military axis stated that forces "thwarted a large-scale Houthi attack on all fronts of the Tor Al-Baha axis and eliminated all its attacking formations," while the Taiz axis reported ongoing battles in western and southeastern districts without providing casualty figures.

Displacement crisis deepens

Yemen's Executive Unit for Internally Displaced Persons Camps Management announced on Thursday that nearly 198,000 people had fled their homes since fighting intensified in July, with Taiz province hosting 97,529 displaced people across 15 districts. The government unit said that "waves of forced displacement caused by the continued military escalation, direct shelling and deteriorating security conditions have worsened, posing serious threats to the lives and safety of civilians," registering 29,519 families nationwide. Lahej province ranked second with 50,253 displaced people, followed by Aden with 17,782, while thousands more fled from Al-Hudaydah toward the temporary capital, according to the statement.

Aviation threat and child recruitment

Yemen's Human Rights Ministry warned on Wednesday that it had documented the deaths of at least 100 children recruited by the Houthis during September fighting, stressing the figure represented only verified cases and the actual toll was likely higher. The ministry said children were abducted from provinces under Houthi control, transferred to mobilization camps and deployed to battlefronts before being returned to families as bodies, citing verified names and photographs.

In a related development, the government filed a complaint with the UN Security Council warning of "a serious threat to the safety and security of international civil aviation over the southern Red Sea, due to the use by the Houthi terrorist militia of Iranian-origin weapons launched from areas under its control in Al-Hudaydah province toward international air routes." The letter urged the council "to take urgent international action to confront this threat and enforce the arms embargo imposed on the militia," noting the heat-tracking systems cannot distinguish between military and civilian targets. Saudi Arabia announced full support for the government on Wednesday as the escalation — the widest since an April 2022 truce collapsed — entered its third month with the Houthis having seized Mayyun Island overlooking the Bab al-Mandeb strait in September.