What We Know About the Hospital Siege in Yemen's Taiz

A hospital in Yemen's southwestern city of Taiz has warned it could stop dialysis treatment within days as a renewed Houthi siege chokes off fuel, medical solutions and oxygen, according to Al Jazeera. Here is what is documented so far, in the order events were reported.

What triggered the renewed siege?

Al Jazeera reported that Houthi forces advanced in the Taiz countryside in the first week of October 2026, cutting off supply routes into the government-held city. The outlet noted Taiz was previously placed under a complete Houthi siege between 2015 and 2016, during the early years of Yemen's war, making this month's blockade a repeat of a tactic used nearly a decade earlier.

How many patients are affected at the Republican Hospital?

At the dialysis center inside Taiz's Republican Hospital, 270 patients regularly receive treatment, Al Jazeera reported. One of them, 16-year-old Omar Mukhtar Hammoud, suffers from kidney failure and was undergoing dialysis when the outlet's reporter visited around 10:30am. Dr. Essam Mahyoub Dahan, the center's director, told Al Jazeera that fuel and medical-solution shortages had already forced staff to cut sessions from four hours to two and a half. "We know this is not adequate, but we have no choice if we are to keep the centre operating for as long as possible before it shuts down completely," Dahan said.

What did the October 12 health office statement say?

Taiz governorate's health office warned on October 12 that the siege and the obstruction of supplies could endanger 1,110 kidney-failure patients across the governorate, according to Al Jazeera. Those patients rely on hospitals that collectively run about 210 dialysis sessions a day, the health office said — a scale far larger than the Republican Hospital's caseload alone.

What is the supply shortfall, specifically?

Dahan told Al Jazeera that specialized dialysis solutions, normally delivered by Yemen's Ministry of Health every three months, were close to running out. A delivery due earlier in October did not arrive because of the siege, he said. Al Jazeera did not report a specific date by which existing stocks would be exhausted beyond Dahan's estimate of "days."

What have international groups said?

Amnesty International called on the Houthis to immediately reopen vital roads into and around Taiz, Al Jazeera reported, warning about the closure of the main road connecting the city to surrounding areas. The outlet's account of the Amnesty statement was cut off before further detail on the organization's demands.

What remains unconfirmed?

Al Jazeera's report did not specify how much fuel or how many days of dialysis-solution stock remained at the time of publication, nor did it include a response from Houthi authorities to the siege allegations. Those gaps leave open how quickly, or whether, the predicted shutdown could be averted.

The situation is being tracked through Al Jazeera's original reporting, published October 24, 2026.