Aid Workers Warn Besieged Yemeni City of Taiz Is Running Out of Water, Gas and Food

Aid workers in Yemen have warned that the city of Taiz is running out of water, gas and fresh food, and that its humanitarian crisis is becoming unmanageable, according to Oxfam, the international aid group.

Taiz has more than 900,000 residents. Iran-allied Houthi forces have largely encircled the city, cutting it off from most of its supply routes. A siege, in which armed forces surround a place and block its access, has left residents dependent on whatever can still get through.

Fatma Jaffar, an advocacy manager at Oxfam, said no fuel had entered Taiz for two or three weeks. She said even Oxfam staff were struggling to buy water.

Prices have risen sharply. A 20-litre container of petrol that cost about $20 before the crisis was selling for about $80 on the hidden market, according to the Guardian. The World Food Programme, the United Nations food agency, said wheat flour reserves in the city were nearly exhausted as of mid-October.

Fighting in the week of October 21 raged around the old airport in Taiz. It caused extensive damage in a densely populated residential area.

The fighting is part of a wider escalation. The conflict intensified in July 2026, after government-loyal forces and a Saudi-led coalition, a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia, launched airstrikes on the Houthi-held airport in Sana'a. Those strikes shattered a 2022 ceasefire deal, an agreement to halt fighting.

Al Jazeera has reported that Taiz was under siege again as food and fuel prices rose, and that Houthi advances and the closure of vital roads into the city had triggered shortages. A New York Times report said residents had begun hoarding gasoline.

Funding for relief is also shrinking. The UN's humanitarian coordination office, known as OCHA, estimates that 22.3 million people in Yemen are in need of help in 2026. Donor countries had funded only 23 per cent of the UN humanitarian relief programme for Yemen for 2026 as of October. The UK has allocated £104m in aid to Yemen for each of the next three years, down from £196m allocated in 2020. US aid to Yemen has been virtually wiped out, and Germany has halved its aid programme.

OCHA also reported that 231,991 people were displaced by conflict in Yemen between August 1 and October 14, 2026.