Yemen's War Reignites as Houthi Red Sea Offensive Displaces Nearly 150,000

Yemen's civil war, largely frozen behind static front lines since a United Nations–brokered truce in April 2022, has reignited into its most intense fighting in four years. A Houthi offensive that began in July and accelerated sharply this month has swept down Yemen's Red Sea coast, seizing the port of Mocha and the islands that command the Bab al-Mandeb strait, while the internationally recognized government has mounted a counteroffensive around the highland city of Taiz. The renewed war has displaced well over 100,000 people in a matter of weeks and killed dozens of civilians, according to United Nations agencies, reversing what had been the country's longest period of relative calm since the conflict began in 2014.

On Monday, Yemeni government forces struck Houthi positions in the Al-Rubaie area west of Taiz, the latest in a string of near-daily air and artillery exchanges around the city that have continued through the weekend, according to Yemen's Taiz Military Axis and Houthi-run media. The Iran-aligned Houthi movement said strikes on Sunday hit a market area in Houthi-held territory near Taiz, killing at least seven people and wounding around 40, an account that could not be independently verified. Government forces say they have pushed Houthi fighters back from a mountaintop position, Jabal Bazel, that overlooks Houthi supply routes into the city, part of a broader push that has widened in recent days to include strikes on weapons depots and reinforcement convoys in the Taiz governorate.

The Numbers

Humanitarian agencies describe a rapidly worsening crisis layered on top of an already catastrophic one. The UN refugee agency's latest displacement snapshot puts newly displaced people at roughly 128,000 since the fighting escalated in September, on top of the 5.2 million Yemenis already living in displacement nationwide. Yemen's own displacement-management authority has recorded around 147,000 people forced from their homes across eight provinces since the start of September, while the latest tally reported by Al Jazeera puts the total displaced since the offensive began in July at roughly 146,000 — the discrepancies reflecting the different cutoff dates and methodologies each agency uses to track a population that is often fleeing more than once.

The human toll extends beyond displacement figures. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has verified that at least 32 civilians were killed between early August and late September, including 15 children and three women, and that roughly 125 people were killed or wounded in the most recent flare-up alone, according to figures released by the rights office. UNICEF has separately verified that 15 children have been killed and 14 injured since early September, with three more missing. More than 3,000 people have crossed the Red Sea to Djibouti to escape the fighting. Yemen's broader humanitarian caseload remains staggering: an estimated 22.3 million people, more than half the population, need humanitarian assistance, 18.3 million face acute food insecurity, and roughly 2.2 million children under five are acutely malnourished.

How the Truce Collapsed

The Houthi movement, which controls Sanaa and much of northern Yemen, seized the capital in 2014, prompting a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition to intervene the following year on behalf of the internationally recognized government. Years of grinding, inconclusive war followed until a UN-mediated truce took hold in April 2022. Though the truce formally expired months later, its main provisions — a rough freeze along existing front lines and a halt to major offensives — held loosely for nearly three years, even as the Houthis, who say they act in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, separately began attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea from late 2023 onward.

That informal calm broke down this summer. Houthi forces launched an offensive in July that, by September, had turned into a rapid advance along the Red Sea coastline, culminating in the capture of the port city of Mocha and the seizure of Mayyun (Perim) Island along with the Greater and Lesser Hanish islands, giving the group effective control over shipping lanes through the Bab al-Mandeb strait. A Yemeni military spokesman, Brigadier General Majed al-Nazili, said the Houthi buildup in the strait "pose[s] a serious threat to international flight paths" and "endanger[s] the safety of civil aviation," a reference to the group's growing arsenal of drones and missiles. The Houthis have also fired on Saudi Arabia itself in recent weeks, including a claimed missile and drone attack on Riyadh and a strike on an Aramco facility at the Red Sea export hub of Yanbu, prompting the Saudi-led coalition to say it intercepted a missile aimed at the Saudi capital.

Civilians Caught Between Two Fronts

Taiz, Yemen's third-largest city with a prewar population near one million, has been partly besieged by Houthi forces controlling the hills around it since 2015, making it one of the war's most enduring symbols of civilian hardship. The renewed fighting has hit it hardest of all: government figures show roughly 8,300 households, or close to 50,000 people, displaced from Taiz districts including Jabal Habashy, Al Ma'afer, Maqbanah, Mawza and Al Wazi'iyah alone. Families uprooted from Mocha and the western coast, many fleeing for the second or third time in the conflict, are arriving in already strained host communities with little more than what they carried.

The UN rights office has also documented attacks on displacement camps themselves, including incidents in Marib province in August and September, and says more than 70 UN staff members remain detained by the Houthis, some for years, complicating the delivery of aid. Humanitarian movement into and within parts of Yemen's west coast has been suspended altogether because of insecurity, and aid workers describe key access roads as impassable, cutting off some of the newly displaced from emergency assistance even as needs multiply.

"Civilians are now bearing the brunt of this latest upsurge in fighting," said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk.

Condemnation, Denial and a Warning From Aden

The renewed war has drawn a familiar chorus of international condemnation aimed almost entirely at the Houthis. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it "strongly condemns the Houthis' decision to resume conflict in Yemen and their recent attacks on Saudi Arabia, including the targeting of civilian and energy infrastructure," warning that the group's actions "endanger wider regional stability, and freedom of navigation and vital trade routes through the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb," and calling on the Houthis "to cease their attacks and escalation immediately." The European Union's foreign policy service issued a similar statement, expressing "full solidarity with Saudi Arabia and the Government of Yemen" and describing the strikes as "a dangerous escalation" that must stop.

Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam has rejected the UN's casualty accounting as one-sided, arguing that Saudi-backed forces have targeted public facilities and disputing what he called selective attention to Houthi actions. Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council chairman, Rashad al-Alimi, has struck a defiant tone from the government side, warning that Houthi escalation "will not alter the balance of power and deterrence established by the armed forces" and cautioning armed groups against "misreading the government's patience." Saudi Arabia's cabinet has separately condemned the Houthi strikes on its territory as "terroristic acts" targeting civilians.

No Negotiations in Sight

Neither side shows signs of pulling back. Yemen's parliament has approved a general mobilization measure, and al-Alimi has ordered accelerated efforts to recruit fighters and process amnesty arrangements for Houthi-aligned combatants willing to defect. Government forces claim momentum around Taiz, but the Houthis retain their coastal gains and, with them, leverage over one of the world's most important shipping chokepoints. Outside powers are edging closer to the conflict's margins: France has confirmed a small non-combat troop presence at the Yanbu oil terminal in Saudi Arabia, while Pakistan and Turkiye have held talks on defense cooperation with Gulf partners rattled by the escalation.

No new peace talks have been scheduled, and UN agencies say funding for the humanitarian response is falling well short of needs even as displacement climbs by the week. UNHCR has declared a three-month Level 1 emergency covering Yemen, Djibouti and Somalia and is seeking $25 million to support an estimated 231,000 people with protection services inside Yemen alone. Aid officials caution that the toll — in the hundreds of thousands displaced and dozens of civilians confirmed dead, with casualty figures from both sides still unverified — is likely to keep rising for as long as the fight for Taiz and the Red Sea coast continues.