Governor Nabil Shamsan says 1,800 people lack dialysis supplies and 120 health centres have suspended services, and calls for aid agencies to deliver supplies to Taiz.
Taiz governor Nabil Shamsan said his city in Yemen was receiving no more than 1,000 cubic metres of water a day, against estimated minimum daily needs of about 35,000 cubic metres.
In a briefing covered by the Guardian, Shamsan said Houthi roadblocks were stopping water shipments and the group’s forces had a near-total grip on roads into the city, where more than 800,000 people lived.
A key road into Taiz reopened on 13 June 2024, partially lifting the siege. Shamsan’s latest briefing sought international action to lift a month-long siege.
Houthi leader Abdul-Malik Badr al-Din al-Houthi denied that Taiz was under siege. He said the way was open for food, medicine and humanitarian aid, and invited people to visit the city to verify his account.
Shamsan said as many as 1,800 people needed dialysis, a treatment that filters the blood, but could not access the supplies for it. He also said 120 health centres had suspended services.
Al-Thawra Hospital director Abdulrahman al-Sabri described shortages at his facility in comments to Al Jazeera published on 28 October. He said the hospital urgently needed diesel to generate electricity, along with medicines and medical supplies for emergency care and surgery. He identified 400 dialysis patients as especially vulnerable to those shortages; Shamsan separately gave a figure of up to 1,800 people needing dialysis supplies.
Shamsan said food stocks were depleted and wheat prices were soaring. Oxygen and water supplies were running out, while rubbish accumulated because landfill sites were full or inaccessible.
Shamsan said schools had closed, affecting hundreds of thousands of children, and restaurants had closed for lack of fuel. Fuel shortages also threatened neonatal intensive care units in Taiz.
More than 6,400 newly displaced families, averaging seven members each, had arrived in Taiz to escape fighting, he said. His figure counted families arriving in the city. He also said 64 people, including civilians, had been killed and another 173 injured from August to 20 October 2026.
Niku Jafarnia, a Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch, said renewed Houthi efforts to cut off food, water and medicine showed disregard for civilian lives. She described a 12-year siege during which the Houthis had bombed, starved and denied humanitarian aid to a million Taiz residents, with scant adherence to international law.
Shamsan called for access that would allow aid agencies, including the United Nations, to deliver supplies to Taiz, saying statements of solidarity were not enough.
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Correction ·
House style applied: Armenian spellings of names.
