Authorities in Yemen's southwestern Taiz province recorded 5,025 cases of illness in October that they linked to accumulating waste in Taiz city, where weeks of fighting have driven 6,400 families to seek refuge.
Taiz province's Office for Siege Affairs said infectious and respiratory illnesses and fevers were among the cases recorded as waste piled up in streets, residential areas and drainage channels.
Ailan Abdel Haq, the province's deputy governor for health affairs, accused the Houthi group Tuesday of turning back waste trucks before they could unload at a temporary landfill west of the city. Taiz has been unable to access its main landfill for more than 11 years. Abdel Haq urged UN agencies to intervene to get the trucks through and reopen the main site.
Taiz Governor Nabil Shamsan said the latest arrivals brought the number of displaced families in the city to 39,400, adding to pressure on already strained services.
Elsewhere in the province, the Office for Siege Affairs said a shell fired by Houthi forces struck a home in Al-Athawir village in Hayfan district, killing three girls aged 3, 7 and 12 and a 35-year-old woman. Four other civilians were wounded. The Houthis did not immediately comment on the shelling.
Ayman al-Kamali, director of the independent Taiz Human Rights Center, told Anadolu that more than 50 civilians were killed and dozens wounded by shelling, sniper fire and mine explosions across the province over the past four weeks.
Government forces control Taiz city, while the Houthis hold parts of the surrounding province. Yemeni rights and aid groups accuse the Houthis of besieging the city and blocking aid convoys. The group denies the accusations.
A military escalation between government forces and the Houthis resumed in July, killing and wounding thousands and displacing more than a quarter of a million people, according to UN reports.
The escalation ended a period of relative calm that had prevailed in Yemen since April 2022, while the humanitarian crisis has worsened amid continued fighting and displacement.
Yemen has been at war since the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa and several provinces in September 2014, prompting a Saudi-led coalition to intervene in March 2015 in support of the internationally recognized government.
