What is happening along the Taiz–Aden road is not a military maneuver in the conventional sense. It is a mechanism of siege.
What travels along this road is fuel destined for hospitals, patients on their way to operating rooms, and newborns in need of incubators. Closing it means death by degrees.
The blockade is being imposed by Saudi-backed government forces, while Ansar Allah maintains a presence inside the city to defend it .
Reuters’ report this Tuesday, citing a briefing by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), turns the discussion from political rhetoric into hard numbers:
— More than 13,000 pregnant women in Taiz have been deprived of essential healthcare.
— Of 27 emergency obstetric and neonatal care facilities, only five remain partially operational.
— Approximately 147,000 women and girls of reproductive age have lost access to essential medical services.
— At the Yemeni-Swedish Motherhood and Childhood Hospital, daily births have fallen from around ten to five. Most incubators are out of service because of fuel shortages, and UNFPA representative Francesco Galtieri warns that the hospital could shut down entirely if the disruption continues. Documented cases of unsafe deliveries are also increasing.
The World Food Programme completes the picture: more than 800,000 people in Taiz and surrounding areas have been cut off from food assistance since the beginning of October.
Saudi Arabia, which has financed the war in Yemen since 2015, has turned this corridor into a frontline. The blockade it maintains is emptying hospitals before artillery shells even reach them.
The resistance ( meaning the Houthis - Ansarullah ) in Yemen has endured and kept its administrative capital functioning. But the price of that endurance is recorded every day on the bodies of women and children.