Taiz has come to occupy a prominent place in the renewed Yemeni conflict, where Houthi forces and the UN-recognised government, operating with support from a Saudi-led coalition, are locked in direct confrontation. Armed fighters aligned with the Houthi movement have severed the primary road linking Taiz to Aden over recent weeks, a blockade that has pushed residents from their homes and deepened an already strained humanitarian situation.

Capturing Taiz — Yemen's third-largest urban centre — would represent a notable shift in the trajectory of the country's ongoing civil conflict, which returned to active fighting this summer following four years without hostilities. According to Katja Juric, who oversees programmes for the International Organization for Migration from her base in Aden, roughly 600,000 people are thought to live in Taiz city. Figures from official channels put the number of people displaced by the recent bout of fighting at around 80,000.

Positioned along the divide separating Houthi-controlled territory from areas held by government forces since fighting broke out in early 2015, Taiz has widely been regarded as a stronghold of resistance to the armed group, which maintains ties to Iran. Situated across terrain that rises steeply above Aden — where the internationally recognised government maintains its seat — and overlooking the low-lying coastal corridor stretching toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, these highlands represent the final urban foothold that forces opposed to the Houthis retain in Yemen's southern uplands.

Analysts have noted that if Houthi forces were to seize Taiz, the ability of pro-government troops to sustain their operations near Bab el-Mandeb — and to prevent Houthi advances toward Aden — would be considerably weakened. Such an outcome would hand a notable setback, both practical and symbolic, to the government and the Saudi-backed military coalition aligned against the Houthis.

The urban centre has long occupied the forward edge of a government-held corridor pushing northward into territory under Houthi control. Houthi fighters occupied a ring of territory curving around Taiz from the north, east, and west, while pro-government troops retained the city itself along with its surrounding areas, among them Jebel Sabar, the peak that rises from the southern edge of the urban area.

Fighting resumed in Yemen, prompting armed units aligned with the Houthi movement to advance on territory below Jebel Sabar, aiming to cut off Taiz by taking hold of land flanking the Aden road — an approximately 200-kilometre (125-mile) corridor of rugged, undulating landscape where any overland advance tends to move at a measured pace. Portions of the route passing through al-Turbah and Mudiriyat al-Misrakh have come under Houthi authority, a situation that has kept Taiz encircled since early October while Houthi forces periodically direct artillery fire at government-held positions in and around the city.

Backed by coalition airstrikes, pro-government troops were working to push Houthi fighters off newly held positions and restore access along the road, yet around Taiz in mid-October the front lines continued to shift in the Houthis' favour rather than yielding any recaptured ground.

Taiz carried a fraught relationship with rulers based in northern Yemen across much of its modern history, and the city stood at the centre of the 2011 Arab Spring protests that brought down long-serving president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Taiz draws its religious identity from Sunni Islam, whereas the Houthi movement follows the Zaydi branch of Shia tradition.

In 2014, an alliance between Saleh and the Houthis brought Sanaa under their control, cutting short a post-Arab Spring political process that had been moving toward a federal, democratic framework for the country. Forces aligned with Saleh moved to occupy positions across the city during the opening months of 2015, a development that drew large-scale public demonstrations before the situation deteriorated into armed confrontations. Demonstrators who took to the streets accused Saleh and the Houthis of working together to seize control of the government outside the bounds of the constitution.

Over the course of several months, fighting between Houthi forces and units backing Saleh on one side, and local combatants alongside military brigades that had thrown their support behind the internationally recognised government on the other, spread through the city and its surrounding areas. Under a drawn-out siege, people living in Taiz endured shelling, sniper fire, and the near-total cutting of supply lines before armed forces aligned with the government drove back Houthi fighters and their allies, reopening a land route connecting the city to Aden. Urban combat gripped the city across all of 2015 and into portions of 2016, with the encirclement of the area persisting in extended intervals through to 2017.

IOM figures put the number of people uprooted by the recent hostilities in Taiz province at a minimum of 121,000, with a considerable portion of that total drawn from villages and settlements beyond the provincial city itself. People living in Taiz have described to a broadcaster a growing scarcity of everyday goods alongside steep price rises at local markets, conditions they attribute to the road connecting the city to Aden being severed by Houthi forces.

Humanitarian organisations on the ground have flagged acute deficits across four basic necessities — fuel, food, medicine, and safe drinking water. According to a mid-October assessment by the World Food Programme, the urban supply of wheat flour had been drawn down to the point where reserves were close to running out. Pre-existing health conditions face a heightened prospect of deterioration under these circumstances.

Nutrition screening carried out by UNICEF across Yemen turned up malnutrition in roughly one out of every three children examined. Yemen carries an active burden of cholera, dengue, and malaria alongside its other health challenges.

Efforts by allied ground units, operating alongside Saudi air support, to reclaim the route and restore access remain ongoing, with the outcome far from certain. Houthi fighters have been pressing their offensive against Saudi-linked positions around Taiz, drawing on what outside observers characterise as a force better organised and more operationally coherent than at earlier points in the fighting, while also working to draw the encirclement of the city tighter.

A drawn-out encirclement of the sort Taiz endured during the conflict's earlier phase remains a possibility. Opposition from residents means that any forward movement would likely trigger a prolonged and contested battle.