Madar (International) - UN agencies warned on Friday, October 23, 2026, of a fast-developing humanitarian emergency inside the Yemeni city of Taiz, which has been encircled by Houthi forces fighting government troops, saying the city had been cut off for 20 days, UN News reported.
"It's 20 days and counting since Taiz has been cut off... we are seeing increasingly that the fighting makes it impossible for us to get in and impossible for people to get out," Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN aid coordination office OCHA, told a briefing in Geneva, adding that very little fuel, food or other supplies had reached the city. With diesel for water trucks very scarce, water production in the city had fallen by about half and the price of truck water had roughly tripled, he said.
The World Food Programme said more than 800,000 people in Taiz had been cut off from assistance, including 600,000 who depend on humanitarian aid and 200,000 women and children. UNICEF said it had screened more than 168,000 children in Taiz this year, finding more than 52,000 acutely malnourished, including more than 11,500 with severe acute malnutrition.
The International Organization for Migration recorded about 258,679 people displaced between June 7 and October 19, 2026, mostly in Taiz and Lahj governorates, while 3,836 Yemenis had arrived in Djibouti as of October 17. At least 1,574 people have been killed and 6,939 injured in the conflict since August, according to reports cited by the UN.
