{"id":100281,"date":"2026-09-27T21:16:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T21:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=100281"},"modified":"2026-09-27T21:16:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T21:16:00","slug":"inside-yemens-front-line-city-as-houthis-battle-for-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/?p=100281","title":{"rendered":"Inside Yemen&#8217;s front-line city as Houthis battle for control"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He told me he had sent his children to a displacement camp because they could no longer cope with the shelling and gunfire. He had stayed with his wife and sisters to look after their animals. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I am terrified,&#8221; he said, &#8220;but I have no choice, we will all go hungry without our animals and die anyway.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He gave only his first name, fearful of repercussions if the Houthis take over the area in the days ahead. Contacts from the Houthi side have told us they are consolidating troops, preparing for a major offensive. When we asked government forces about this they said they are aware and were preparing too.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">At the closest checkpoint to the front line, we met some fighters who had just returned from positions high on the mountain, just a few hundred metres from advancing Houthis. One of them said the bodies of 18 government soldiers lay in an area his unit could fire across but not reach.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;We shoot over them, but we can&#8217;t pull them out,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fighting around Taiz has intensified since the Houthis seized the strategic Red Sea port of Mokha, 85km to the west of the city, on 10 September, after a ceasefire that had largely held for four years unravelled.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The group took control of a swathe of territory overlooking the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait \u2013 a crucial shipping corridor linking Europe and Asia. This contributed to a rise in oil prices as fears rose of further disruption to supplies from the region.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cw98005ndz7no?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He told me he had sent his children to a displacement camp because they could no&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100282,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1938,442,2631,5408,2499,2227],"class_list":["post-100281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories","tag-battle","tag-city","tag-control","tag-frontline","tag-houthis","tag-yemens"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v21.0 (Yoast SEO v28.5) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Inside Yemen&#039;s front-line city as Houthis battle for control - Gulf Times | News by the minute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Gulf Times: Latest news across the GCC from UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Saudi Arabia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cw98005ndz7no?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Inside Yemen&#039;s front-line city as Houthis battle for control\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Gulf News| UAE&#039;s Largest News aggregator site\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cw98005ndz7no?at_medium=RSS&amp;at_campaign=rss\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Gulf Times | News by the minute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/100084981843786\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-09-27T21:16:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/gulftimes.ae\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/dca633d0-bab6-11f1-aa85-8f10bc212c53.avif\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"gulftimes\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Gulftimesuae\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Gulftimesuae\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"gulftimes\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Inside Yemen's front-line city as Houthis battle for control - 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