TAIZ, Yemen — More than a million people in Yemen third-largest city are stretching every bit of drinking water they can find as Iran-backed Houthi fighters close in around Taiz, cutting off nearby wells and keeping most water trucks from getting through.
Water has been hard to come by in Taiz for more than ten years, but aid groups say the past few weeks have turned a chronic problem into an emergency. Desalination plants are short of fuel and running far below what they can produce, and the local water utility is barely keeping limited service going. Truck drivers who still make the dangerous run into the city have in some cases tripled what they charge, and families report paying up to 75% more for bottled water than they did a few weeks ago.
UNICEF says the water networks it backs in the area reach roughly 3 million residents, including no fewer than 1.6 million kids, and that diesel shortages now threaten to shut the pumps down. The agency is supplying fuel to keep them running and providing emergency water and sanitation help to more than 300,000 people. Without clean water and working sewers, the agency says, children face a higher chance of getting sick, with diarrheal illness and cholera among the biggest worries.
The squeeze reaches beyond water. Roads such as the corridor linking Taiz and Aden have been disrupted, food prices have climbed, and the World Food Programme says supplies of wheat flour in parts of the province are almost used up. UNICEF screenings this year found more than 52,000 acutely malnourished children in Taiz, close to one in three of those checked.
The province has also absorbed a large share of the people driven from their homes since fighting flared in September, roughly 120,000 by UNICEF count. The Houthis stepped up their push on Taiz after seizing the Red Sea port of Mokha, about 80 miles away, and the city has been a battleground since the civil war began in 2014.
