Yemen’s Renewed Conflict Chokes Roads and Ports, Deepening Displacement Crisis

Renewed fighting in Yemen has severed critical transport routes and disrupted port operations, compounding an already severe humanitarian emergency and forcing tens of thousands of civilians to flee their homes, aid workers and residents say.

In Taiz province, residents describe a sudden return to violence after four years of relative calm. Mohammed, a 39-year-old villager from the Jabal Habashi district, said he began hearing shelling and gunfire at a distance in mid-September. Within a day, the fighting had intensified and the sounds were moving closer as Houthi rebels pressed an advance into areas held by the Saudi-backed Yemeni government.

Fearing for his safety, Mohammed fled with his wife and child to Taiz city, one of Yemen’s largest urban centers. But the city itself sits on the front line and has been contested for much of the country’s 12-year war, leaving him uncertain about how long his refuge will last.

He has found temporary shelter with a relative, a rarity for the thousands of others arriving from rural areas who are now packed into displacement camps. “I am lucky to have a relative who can accommodate me even temporarily. I cannot stand life in crowded camps lacking access to food, healthcare and sanitation,” Mohammed told Al Jazeera.

The displacement wave began after Houthi forces made a rapid advance in September, seizing the entirety of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline and tightening their control over the Bab al-Mandeb strait, a chokepoint on one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. The shift in territorial control has rippled through the country’s transport network, leaving roads closed or too dangerous to use and disrupting the flow of both commercial goods and humanitarian aid.

The United Nations warned on September 22 that internal displacement from the latest escalation could exceed 230,000 people, adding to the more than 5.2 million Yemenis already displaced by years of conflict. The cumulative figures underscore how repeated waves of fighting have eroded the population’s ability to recover between crises.

Mohammed Radman, a displacement coordinator with the Executive Unit for IDP Camp Management in Jabal Habashi district, has spent recent days visiting displacement sites. He described the closure of roads as a matter of life and death. “Road closures have caused indescribable human suffering in Taiz and elsewhere where fighting has erupted,” Radman told Al Jazeera. “Closed roads … sometimes mean death for civilians.”

Before the escalation, aid and essential supplies reached Taiz with relative ease, Radman recalled. Now, travelers must take arduous mountain routes, and the volume of assistance reaching those in need has fallen sharply, intensifying hardship for displaced families in particular.

For many civilians, the closures have also severed their last connection to the lives they left behind. Abdulrahman, 34, was displaced from Taiz governorate’s al-Waziiya district two weeks ago and is now in Taiz city. He wants to retrieve belongings from his home but cannot judge whether the journey would be safe. “If the roads were open as they were before the war, I would have gone to my house in al-Waziiya to bring my mattresses and cooking gas cylinders,” he told Al Jazeera. “Now, I am not sure I would be able to return safely. This reality makes it difficult for us to return to our areas.”

The UN refugee agency UNHCR said last week that humanitarian operations in Yemen face severe constraints. It cited active front lines, movement restrictions, telecommunications disruptions, and damaged roads and infrastructure as factors that limit and slow the delivery of life-saving aid.

Ali Othman, a humanitarian activist in Taiz who has visited camps in recent days, said the displacement has produced “real misery.” Most families, he said, fled with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. “Many are living together, sharing tents,” Othman told Al Jazeera.

He added that host families are buckling under the strain of supporting displaced relatives, while the fighting restricts movement in and out of the camps. “Roads are blocked or unsafe, and so displacement camps become isolated,” Othman said. “Humanitarian organizations fail to reach camps, and so aid may not reach the displaced at all; people in the camps suffer unseen and uncared for amid the chaos of the war.”

The cost of moving food, medical supplies and shelter materials rises as routes become impassable or insecure, Othman noted, making deliveries increasingly difficult or impossible. The International Organization for Migration estimates that more than 22 million Yemenis — roughly half the population — are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.

The collapse of the transport network is measurable in travel times. Before the Houthi takeover of Mocha city and port, a truck could travel from Mocha to Taiz city in about three hours, according to Radman. “Now the Mocha-Taiz road is closed. And a journey from Taiz to Aden requires six hours or more. Before the ongoing conflict, the same journey would have taken about two hours,” he said.

The renewed conflict is also constricting the flow of commercial goods, raising concerns about food availability and prices. Wafiq Saleh, an economic researcher and executive director of the Taiz Centre for Yemeni-Gulf Studies, has warned that the disruption threatens to deepen economic hardship for a population already struggling with poverty and limited purchasing power.

The combined pressures of displacement, blocked roads and reduced imports are straining a humanitarian system that was already overstretched before the latest escalation. Aid groups say the closure of key arteries means camps can become cut off for extended periods, leaving families without regular access to food, clean water, medical care or sanitation — conditions that historically drive disease outbreaks and malnutrition in Yemen.

With front lines active and infrastructure damaged, humanitarian access is likely to remain constrained as long as the fighting continues. For civilians such as Mohammed and Abdulrahman, the immediate concern is survival, but the longer-term question is whether they will ever be able to return home safely.