Fear strikes Yemen’s 3rd largest city Taiz as Houthi rebels encircle it in a new siege

As Iran-backed Houthi rebels push to capture the strategic city of Taiz in Yemen's 12-year civil war, fear gripped the locals with many deciding to flee. CAIRO (AP) — As word came of Houthi rebels closing in, Weam Abdullah and her family decided it was time to leave their home in Taiz, Yemen’s third largest city. They had survived a yearslong siege by the rebels earlier in their country’s civil war, and they didn’t want to endure that again.

They made it out just in time: Just after Abdullah, her husband and two young children left, the rebels on Oct. 4 captured a key town, largely encircling the city and cutting off most access to supplies from government-held areas. “We already feel dead, there was already despair” in the city, Abdullah said, speaking by phone to The Associated Press from a province further south.

Everyone is conspiring against us even though we’re not affiliated with any party or politics.” The Iranian-backed Houthis — even as they escalate attacks on Saudi Arabia with a string of deadly attacks on the airport in the capital Riyadh — are trying to make a major gain in Yemen’s 12-year-old civil war by moving on Taiz, a prize they have long sought to capture. Their assault comes after the rebels’ lightning offensive last month that seized Yemen’s Red Sea coast, strengthening their hand to attack Saudi oil shipping and further throwing world energy prices into turmoil.. Their advance has triggered fear among the more than 1 million residents of Taiz, located in the high rugged mountains of southwestern Yemen.

On a recent day, crowds mobbed groceries in the city center to buy up food and other essentials, fearing they will soon run out. Deisel fuel and cooking gas supplies are running low, residents said. Some people are collecting cardboard and wood to burn for cooking, and merchants are jacking up prices for food and water, said Shaif al-Gabiri, a child protection consultant at a local non-profit group, the Civic Center for Advocacy and Support.

“If the siege continues, then these stocks will run out.” Explosions can be heard in the distance from fighting between Houthis and pro-government forces in the surrounding mountains. Some strikes have landed in the city itself, reminding residents of the hell they lived through previously and had hoped might be over. Taiz was under siege for years by the Houthis earlier in the war Taiz has been a front line ever since Yemen’s civil war erupted in 2014 when the Houthi rebels seized the north and much of the west of the …