At least four civilians were killed and nine others injured on Saturday during a Houthi ballistic missile attack on the Haijat Al Abd highway that connects Taiz with the southern part of Yemen, state news agency Saba reported.
There were no immediate reports of casualties among Yemeni forces.
On Saturday, spokesman for the pro-government forces on Yemen's western coast, Wadah Dobish, announced the launch of a counter-attack in southern Hodeidah's Al Garrahi district as on-ground clashes remain intense.
Yemen's Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour has also called for urgent humanitarian support, saying “thousands” of civilians have been displaced by a sharp rise in fighting between government forces and Houthi rebels in Yemen's Taiz and Hodeidah.
The ministry blamed the increasing humanitarian needs on attacks by Houthi rebels on the two governorates, which have escalated in recent weeks. Taiz and Hodeidah were attacked on Wednesday by 14 ballistic missiles and “concurrent drone attacks” targeting areas along the Red Sea coast, government forces said.
“The targeting of residential areas and displacement camps has further intensified the suffering of already vulnerable communities, particularly children, women and older persons,” the ministry's statement added.
More than 22 million people require humanitarian assistance in Yemen while the UN and other NGOs have had to scale back operations in Houthi-controlled territories due to security concerns, including raids and kidnappings. Even before the recent escalation, Yemen had 5.2 million internally displaced persons, and 18.3 million people were acutely food-insecure, UN data from March shows.
“The needs on the ground are not simply statistics,” the ministry said. The numbers reflect people in dire need of emergency shelter, food, medicine, safe drinking water, and access to health facilities and sanitation services to help prevent the spread of disease and protect communities.
“Given the scale and urgency of the situation, the ministry calls on civil society organisations, local volunteer teams, philanthropists, business leaders and humanitarian actors across the country to move immediately from concern to concrete action on the ground,” its statement added.
The Houthis have stepped up attacks on government positions and Saudi infrastructure in recent months, raising fears of a return to all-out fighting four years after a fragile truce was struck. Although the UN-mediated truce expired only months after it was agreed in 2022, fighting between the Houthis and Yemeni government forces had largely ended.
