Inside Yemen's Front-Line City as Houthis Battle for Control
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By Nawal Al-Maghafi, Senior International Investigations Correspondent
Reporting from Taiz, Yemen
Published 6 minutes ago
"This is the first drone," said the soldier accompanying us in south-western Yemen. "It's usually followed by an attack."
The buzzing sound overhead got louder as we took cover under the bushes, before climbing back into the vehicle and driving away. Within about 10 minutes, the loud thuds of strikes followed, one after another, though it was unclear where they landed.
It is hard to tell where the front line begins in the mountains south-west of the city of Taiz. Saudi-backed pro-government forces are battling to push back Houthi fighters, who swept down the coast of the Red Sea earlier this month, taking control of a key shipping chokepoint and escalating Yemen's civil war.
We travelled with government forces from Taiz through checkpoints to the line where their control ends and no man's land begins, in order to see the fighting up close.
Homes are scattered across the slopes, but many stand abandoned after families fled to escape the fighting. It is eerily quiet, no sound of the cars or motorbikes that are continuously whizzing through the city. All you can hear is the bleating of livestock and the sound of incoming and outgoing fire.
"Two mortars landed here on my property," said Ali, sitting outside his home with a herd of goats, about 1km (0.6 miles) from the front line.
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.
"I am terrified," he said, "but I have no choice, we will all go hungry without our animals and die anyway."
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.
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.
"We shoot over them, but we can't pull them out," he said.
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.
The group took control of a swathe of territory overlooking the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait – 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.
Taiz is Yemen's third biggest city and its cultural capital, and is home to close to a million people. It sits at a vital intersection between Houthi-controlled areas in northern Yemen and government-held ones in the south – and is hemmed in by front lines in several directions.