Yemen’s civilians are paying a brutal price for this escalating conflict, according to United Nations relief chief Tom Fletcher. He shared his assessment in a post on the US social media platform X.
Roads are closed and supplies are running out in the besieged city of Taiz. The city is home to around one million people. Water production there has halved, while food prices have soared by at least 50 percent.
Hospitals in the area are running low on fuel and medicines, Fletcher added. He spoke about the crisis with Yemen’s Foreign Minister Afrah Abdulaziz Al-Zouba.
Humanitarian partners have reached nearly 260,000 displaced people, Fletcher stated, but the needs are outpacing our response. Our asks are clear. Open the roads and let them through. Civilians cannot be held hostage by the fighting.
Fletcher also expressed outrage over the death of Mohammad el Shami. El Shami was a staff member of the UN Human Rights Office in Yemen who died in Houthi custody.
Seventy UN staff and dozens of other humanitarians remain detained, according to Fletcher. They are not bargaining chips. Release them.
El Shami had worked for the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The Houthi group had arbitrarily detained him since June 6, 2024.
El Shami was the second UN employee to die in Houthi detention. Ahmed Ba’alawi, a national staff member of the World Food Program, had been arbitrarily detained by local authorities in northern Yemen since January 23, 2025, and died on February 11 of that year.
Yemen has been mired in conflict since 2014. Houthi forces seized the capital, Sanaa, that year, prompting a Saudi-led military intervention in March 2015 in support of the internationally recognized government.
The conflict has triggered one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Millions of people remain dependent on humanitarian assistance across the country.
