Besieged Taiz Running Out of Water, Food and Oxygen: Only 1,000 of 35,000 Cubic Metres of Water Getting In, Governor Says

The Houthis are trying to send the Yemeni city of Taiz “back to the stone age,” the city's governor, Nabil Shamsan, has said in a briefing designed to urge the international community to do more to lift the month-long siege.

Shamsan said massacres were taking place in Yemen's third city, that oxygen and water supplies were running out, and that rubbish was piling up in the streets because landfill sites were either full or inaccessible.

The governor said the city's daily minimum water needs were estimated at about 35,000 cubic metres, but no more than 1,000 cubic metres was being allowed to reach it each day, and water shipments were being stopped at Houthi roadblocks surrounding the city.

With food stocks depleted and the price of wheat soaring, he said “citizens are heading back to the stone age.” Restaurants had closed due to the lack of fuel.

According to Shamsan, as many as 1,800 people were in need of dialysis treatment but unable to access supplies, 120 health centres had been suspended, and schools had closed, affecting hundreds of thousands of children.

He said 64 people had been killed, including civilians, from August to 20 October 2026, and a further 173 injured. More than 6,400 newly displaced families, each averaging seven members, had come to the city to flee the fighting.

“We are not talking about living, just surviving,” he said.

His account was contradicted by the Houthi leader, Abdul-Malik Badr al-Din al-Houthi, who said: “The way is open for food, medicine, and humanitarian aid to enter the city and even for Saudi-backed groups to do so. Anyone who wants to verify that there is no siege on the city of Taiz can go to the city and see.”

Shamsan said Houthi forces had a near-total grip on the roads into the city, adding the group had issued a choice to the more than 800,000 people inside the city: “either to leave or to die.”

The governor accused the Houthis of waging not a military battle but a battle to change the identity of Yemen, with captured villages being taken over by new religious leaders and education and religious curricula being changed. “This is not a military war but a war of vengeance,” he said.

Shamsan said people in occupied territories were being required to show loyalty to the Zaydi religion and to sign forms affirming they had joined the Houthis. Scores of children from each village were being forcibly ordered, without their parents' consent, to join the frontlines in Saada and elsewhere, he added.

Vowing that the people of Taiz would resist until the end, he said statements of solidarity were of no use; what was needed was access for aid agencies, including the UN, to deliver supplies to the city.

Reluctant to divulge details of the military campaign, Shamsan said shelling of the city was becoming more frequent and communication between the city and rural areas had broken down. The Houthis now controlled the mobile networks, were sending messages to citizens to end their resistance, and were eavesdropping on all conversations. He said he was speaking only 2–5 km from the frontlines.

Most independent agencies agree that life inside the city is rapidly deteriorating. Niku Jafarnia, a Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “Renewed efforts by the Houthis to cut off food, water, and medicine to Taiz show their utter disregard for civilian lives. Throughout the 12-year-long siege of Taiz, the Houthis have bombed, starved and denied humanitarian aid to a million residents of the city with scant adherence to international law.”