RANIA ABDULLAH

YEMEN_Under a suffocating siege and relentless indiscriminate bombardment, civilians in the countryside and city to Taiz, Yemen, are living a daily humanitarian tragedy. Women victims of sniper fire by the Houthis recount the scale of ongoing violations that harvest lives and destroy livelihoods amid an absolute international silence.

Radhia Abdul Raqib was neither the first nor the last victim of the sniping and indiscriminate bombardment waged by the Houthis against civilians in the city of Taiz, southwest Yemen. At the end of October 2026, Radhia was injured in her hand while grazing sheep in the village of "Al-Dhabab."

She was directly targeted, but miraculously survived death. When she reached the hospital, her finger was amputated. She says: "I was at the beginning of the farm and the Houthis were at its end, and when I returned with the sheep, direct bullets were fired at me," adding with anguish: "We are in our homes and on our land — what are the Houthis looking for?! He justified targeting me by claiming he thought I was a member of the resistance."

Rural areas in the city of Taiz are subjected to sniping and indiscriminate bombardment. They are densely populated areas, and their residents find it difficult to displace or flee from them.

The choice of staying and abandonment

The greatest wish of the young woman in her twenties, Amal Kamal, a mother of two, has become to return to her life after she was injured in the spine by Houthi bullets, losing her fetus in the fourth month of pregnancy as a result. She remained besieged in her village of "Al-Shaqab" in the Sabr Al-Mawadim district.

Amal Kamal says from her hospital bed: "We are besieged inside our village, and we cannot leave our homes or practice our daily lives due to the continued bombardment and sniping. When I was forced to go out in front of the house to fetch water, I was first injured in my foot, then the injury reached my spine."

A report issued by the Taiz Rights Center revealed that the Houthis committed about 1,444 crimes and violations against civilians and civilian objects in Taiz during the month of October. The report recorded the killing of 54 civilians, including 19 children and 13 women, in addition to the injury of 147 others, including 49 children and 42 women, as well as the recording of 166 cases of abduction of civilians.

On the level of property and infrastructure, the report documented the raiding and looting of 374 homes, the total destruction of 9 homes and the partial destruction of 255 homes, in addition to attacks on 121 educational facilities and 190 mosques, and the destruction of 11 health facilities and the seizure of 120 others.

Ongoing crimes

Community activist Dalia Mohammed, who works in the field of monitoring and documentation, said that "the city of Taiz has been witnessing the most horrific crimes from 2015 until now, but recently, specifically from September until now, these violations by the Houthis have varied and increased in horror, as they do not believe in any project that carries life — all their projects are killing and destruction."

She explained that during September and October 2026, Houthi crimes expanded to include every village and neighborhood in Taiz, where many families were recorded as having been displaced and forcibly displaced. "They were displaced at night and some of them came out barefoot and naked. There is no safe place today that receives civilians inside Taiz."

She explained that crimes of targeting roads, which are considered a lifeline for people and their entry and exit to and from the city, are being monitored, in addition to blowing up homes, mining roads, arrests, abductions, spreading terror, looting citizens' property, and imposing extortion by force. Anyone who opposes the Houthis is killed, made to disappear, or arrested.

Dalia Mohammed affirmed that the statistics of civilian victims are limited to the cases that monitors reached or that were transferred to hospitals, pointing to undocumented violations due to the siege amid a sharp deterioration in the humanitarian situation and hospitals being overcrowded with the wounded.

She expresses her regret over the silence of the international community. "There are no international organizations that imposed their presence or at least forced the militias to allow the entry of support to government hospitals to treat the wounded. All these violations are being committed against the people of Taiz."