SANAA, Sept. 21 (Xinhua/GNA) – Saudi airstrikes hit a market and a school in southwestern Yemen’s Taiz province on Monday, killing at least one person, Houthi-run al-Masirah TV reported, as fighting intensifies across the country’s southwest.
The channel, citing a local source, said Saudi warplanes struck a public market in Dhubab district, a coastal area south of the Red Sea port city of Mocha and near the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait.
Farther inland, five airstrikes hit Hayfan district in southern Taiz, killing one civilian, the report said. The channel added that Al-Thawrah School in the district was also hit, without giving details of casualties or damage.
There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia, and the reported strikes and casualty figure could not be independently verified.
The airstrikes came as government forces and Houthi fighters remain locked in fighting in southwestern Yemen, where control of frontline positions has shifted repeatedly in recent days.
The Houthis have recently made major gains along Yemen’s southwestern Red Sea coast, seizing Taiz province’s port city of Mocha on Sept. 10, then pushing south to capture Dhubab and take Mayyun Island in the heart of Bab al-Mandab Strait on Sept. 11.
Government forces are now trying to block further Houthi advances along the mountainous approaches to the strategic waterway.
Yemen’s conflict began in late 2014, when the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa and much of northern Yemen, prompting a Saudi-led coalition to intervene in 2015, in support of the internationally recognized Yemeni government.
The rapid Houthi advance marked the sharpest escalation, since a UN-brokered truce in 2022 largely halted major hostilities.
GNA