South-western Yemen has become a roaring theater of war where the sound of a distant drone often precedes a rain of explosives. While travelling with government troops from Aden toward the foothills that skirt Taiz we heard a soldier whisper, “This is the first drone” before the whine rose to a deafening buzz. Within minutes, a cascade of thuds signaled the arrival of strikes, their exact points of impact hidden by the chaotic smoke and dust. The landscape—steep slopes dotted with half-abandoned homes—offers no clear line between friend and foe, turning the region into a gray zone where every footstep could trigger an attack.
Drone buzz and mortar fire on the mountain villages
At a farm roughly 1km from the ever-shifting front, a goat herder named Ali crouched under the shade of his porch as two mortars slammed into his property. “Two mortars landed here on my property” he told us, eyes fixed on the distant hills where Houthi forces are massing. He had already dispatched his children to a displacement camp; the relentless shelling made it impossible for them to stay. “I am terrified” Ali admitted, “but I have no choice, we will all go hungry without our animals and die anyway.” His words underline a harsh reality: for many residents, livestock represent the only lifeline in a war that has turned fields into front lines.
Across the same ridge, a squad of government soldiers emerged from a checkpoint, their faces smeared with dust. One fighter described a grim tableau: the bodies of 18 comrades lay in a shallow crater that their rifles could fire over but not retrieve. “We shoot over them, but we can’t pull them out,” he said, a stark illustration of the brutal stalemate that defines the Taiz theatre.
Strategic stakes: Mokha, Bab al-Mandab and the battle for high ground
The recent capture of the Red Sea port of Mokha—situated 85km west of Taiz—has heightened the strategic value of the surrounding mountains. On 10 September Houthi fighters seized the city after a ceasefire that had mostly held for four years collapsed. Controlling the heights overlooking the Bab al-Mandab Strait gives the rebels a choke point on a shipping corridor that links Europe and Asia, a lever that can disturb global oil prices and maritime traffic.
Government forces now defend the centre of Taiz, while Houthi positions dominate the north and east. The most ferocious clashes occur on the western approaches, where both sides vie for the ridgelines that command the road southward to Mokha. If the rebels consolidate these elevations, the Yemeni government—backed by an international coalition led by Saudi Arabia—could find it far more difficult to launch a counter-offensive to retake the port.
Human cost: families displaced and wounded
Beyond the gunfire, the civilian toll is unmistakable. At al-Thawra hospital in Taiz, every intensive-care bed was occupied by victims of the front line. Among them was twelve-year-old Ghana Nabeel who was herding goats when a mortar fragment struck her head. Doctors warned that the injury had damaged her brain and that she “will never be the same again.” Her family huddled by the bedside, hoping for a miracle amid the relentless noise of artillery.
Further south, the al-Monig displacement camp swells with families fleeing the fighting around Mokha and surrounding villages. Over the past ten days, roughly 200 families have arrived, each carrying only the barest essentials. One mother, using the pseudonym Maryam Saleh recounted walking barefoot with her five children after their home was shattered by mortar fire. She said her nephew was killed by shrapnel as they fled, a loss that still haunts her every night.
Another harrowing story belongs to Fatma Mohammed Saleh a woman with a disability who spent two days crawling on a rice sack through a landscape riddled with gunfire and exploding shells. “I was crawling and the bullets are coming from here and the shells are there,” she recalled, describing how a passing motorcyclist eventually rescued her and delivered her to the camp. Her account illustrates the extreme lengths civilians endure simply to survive.
The United Nations refugee agency warned on 22 September that more than 130,000 people had been displaced in Yemen during that month alone, on top of the 5.2 million already forced from their homes by the protracted war. The agency cautioned that another 100,000 could be uprooted in the next three months if the fighting continues unchecked.
As night fell over Taiz, the city’s streets glowed with the neon of open shops and bustling eateries, while the distant roar of artillery reminded everyone that peace remains a fragile illusion. The battle for the high ground is as much about controlling a shipping lane as it is about protecting the lives of people like Ali, Ghana and Fatma, whose daily existence hangs on the unpredictable rhythm of drones and mortars.
