About 30 deminers from the Halo Trust remain among hundreds of thousands of civilians stuck in the besieged Yemeni city of Taiz, the organisation said on Wednesday.
Houthi rebels have encircled the government-held city as the two sides fight for control. The blockade has effectively severed the last route through the mountains connecting the city to the interim capital of Aden, the trust said. Taiz region is heavily contaminated by mines, it added.
All supply routes in and out of the city are cut off. Humanitarian groups have been warning about the dwindling food, water, medicine and fuel supplies in the city. The organisation said one of its employees is stuck outside the city, unable to reunite with her children.
“Behind this siege are real people facing impossible choices. Our staff are trapped in Taiz, separated from their families and uncertain when they’ll see their loved ones again,” the Halo Trust's Yemen programme manager Mara van der Kamp said. “The longer this siege continues, the greater the suffering for civilians who have nowhere safe to turn."
On Wednesday, the Houthis claimed a ballistic missile attack on a Saudi operations room in Aden, Yemen's de facto capital. Saudi Arabia did not immediately confirm the strike. Last Thursday, Houthi missiles were fired at the Presidential Palace in Aden, killing five people. On Monday, the government confirmed the deaths of at least 73 people when the Houthis struck a military training camp in Shabwa.
Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen's civil war in support of the government in 2015, fearing the rise of Iranian influence and the prospect of chaos on its borders, after the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa. In 2022 the UN brokered a truce between the warring sides that kept a fragile peace in place until this year.
Saudi Arabia resumed its military campaign in Yemen in support of the internationally recognised government in a bid to reverse the Houthis' sudden gains last month, when they swept along the Red Sea coast to the critical Bab Al Mandeb strait.
The EU has urged the Houthis to lift their siege of Taiz, as the Yemeni government appealed to the UN for urgent action to avert a humanitarian catastrophe. At least 600,000 people in Taiz depend on aid, including more than 200,000 children. More than 200,000 people have been displaced from their homes since fighting began in recent weeks, the UN's International Organisation for Migration said.