Houthis cut vital supply road to Yemen’s Taiz: security sources to AFP

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis on Sunday cut a vital supply route linking Taiz with Aden — the interim capital of the internationally recognised government — according to four security sources.

The Houthi advance follows days of heavy fighting in and around the city of Taiz between the group and government forces.

“We were informed that the Houthis had taken control of the al-Safiya area, where they cut the main road and took control of the police station,” a police source in the area told AFP.

Three sources with the Yemeni military also confirmed Houthi control over the area and supply route, with the group effectively encircling Taiz city.

The military sources added that the Houthis had also halted traffic on the main road linking Taiz to Aden, with fighting in the area ongoing.

The city itself remains under the control of government forces but has long been besieged from the north, east and west by Houthi fighters and remains one of the main fronts in Yemen’s civil war.

“They’ve achieved the military objective of isolating Taiz from Aden, even if they haven’t fully taken control of it,” Farea Al-Muslimi, research fellow at the Chatham House think-tank, told AFP.

Elsewhere in Yemen, the Houthi’s Al-Masirah TV channel reported Saudi strikes in the northern governorates of al-Jawf and Saada, saying at least two people had been wounded.

The strikes come a day after Yemen’s government said its forces hit Houthi targets around the country, including in the capital Sanaa, the northwestern governorate of Saada and the group’s positions near Taiz in the southwest.

The Yemeni government’s air capabilities however remain limited.

Since a Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015 in support of the government, it has primarily been Riyadh’s forces that have carried out airstrikes against the Houthis.

Experts believe the recent operations have most likely been conducted by Saudi warplanes rather than the Yemeni air force.

Following several years of relative calm, Yemen’s war reignited in July against the backdrop of the widening Middle East war.

The country is one of the poorest in the world and remains gripped by a vast humanitarian crisis.

Fighting intensified in September as the Houthis launched a lightning offensive that saw them seize Yemen’s entire Red Sea coast, including the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a vital shipping lane.

The Houthis have in parallel launched a blockade on Saudi energy exports, already squeezed by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Yemen’s war erupted in 2014, when the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa from the Saudi-backed government, before going on to take control of swaths of the country’s north.

Riyadh intervened in the war the following year as the head of the international coalition.