More than 60 killed in Yemen as Houthis and government troops fight for the Red Sea approaches

Fighting between Yemen's internationally recognised government and the Houthi movement killed more than 60 people on 5 September, medical and military sources told AFP. Three government military sources put army dead at 26 in the southwest. Houthi medical and military sources put their own dead at 31. A medical source in government-held Taiz said a missile killed six civilians on a bus and wounded seven. A government official blamed the Houthis for the bus, which was travelling toward Aden.

The Saturday toll followed a Friday on which AFP, compiling several sources, counted 129 dead. The 2022 truce collapsed in July after the Houthis received an Iranian aircraft in Sanaa. Since then the front in western Taiz and southern Hodeidah has opened again. The prize is high ground that looks onto Bab al-Mandeb, the strait that feeds the Red Sea. With the Strait of Hormuz disrupted by the Iran war, that second chokepoint has gained weight for oil leaving Saudi Arabia.

Government units said they had taken heights on the Haifan front south of Taiz, including al-Wathra, Saeed Taha, Dhiban, al-Khadira and al-Najdain. A government officer told AFP the coming hours would be decisive because Houthi units had moved close to Taiz the day before. In western Taiz the Houthis took a mountain base that gives a view across the district. Saudi aircraft flew three strikes on positions the Houthis had just seized there.

The civilian cost is already visible. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said nearly 1,800 families left their homes in less than 48 hours. Shelling in Maqbanah and Jabal Habashi emptied camps that had held displaced people. Al Jazeera, citing Saba, the government agency, reported a Houthi missile on the Heijah al-Abd road south of Taiz. Saba put that civilian toll at four dead and nine wounded, a lower figure than the AFP bus count. The two reports may describe the same road or two incidents. Neither has been reconciled in public.

Hays district, south of Hodeidah, is where photographers saw government pickup crews moving toward the line on Saturday. The geography is simple. Whoever holds the hills above the coastal plain can fire onto the road and the ports. Whoever holds the ports can tax or stop the traffic that still uses the Red Sea after Hormuz became a war zone.

Yemen's war has run long enough that a two-day spike of 190 dead can look like a return to an old pattern rather than a new one. The difference this month is the map around it. Iranian and U.S. ships are trading blows in the Gulf. Israel is digging into a ridge in southern Lebanon. A closed or costly Hormuz makes Bab al-Mandeb the remaining short route between Asia and the Mediterranean. That is why a hill in western Taiz is being fought for again, and why the bus on the Aden road was not travelling through a sideshow.