An attack on a crowded market in southwestern Yemen killed at least 30 people Friday, an official with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels said, in what would rank among the deadliest single attacks since fighting reignited between the rebels and Saudi-backed government forces.
Eight more people were wounded when the Al Hadara market in al-Waziyah, in Taiz province, was struck early in the day, Houthi health ministry spokesperson Anees Alsabahi said in a post on X.
Within hours, the two sides offered sharply conflicting accounts of who was responsible. The Houthis said the market was hit by airstrikes carried out by Saudi warplanes.
Authorities aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognized government in Taiz denied that any airstrikes took place in the area and pointed the finger at the rebels instead. The Associated Press said it could not independently confirm either side’s claims.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said three airstrikes slammed into the market at around 7 a.m. He accused Saudi Arabia of carrying out the attack, asserting that the warplanes launched from the Khamis Mushait air base and departed Taiz province at about 8 a.m. He offered no evidence to back the claim.
Saudi Arabia’s information ministry did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
Footage broadcast by the Houthi-run Al-Masirah television channel showed smoke billowing from the scene. The images revealed a damaged building stocked with canned food, wrecked vehicles, scattered boxes of fruit and piles of rubble and debris.
The provincial media office, which is affiliated with the government, acknowledged in a Facebook statement that the busy market had come under attack and that people had been killed or injured, though it gave no figures. The office warned that “indiscriminate Houthi missile attacks,” including ballistic missiles, put civilian lives at risk, and it called for markets and populated areas to be shielded from the fighting.
It remained unclear how many shoppers and vendors were at the market when it was hit. Markets in the region typically draw large crowds on Fridays, a day off across much of the Arab world.
A widening front around Taiz
The attack comes amid an escalating struggle for Taiz. The province is largely controlled by the Houthis, who have laid siege to its provincial capital, the seat of government forces and their Saudi-allied backers.
In September, the rebels intensified their push on the city of Taiz, a strategic gateway to southern Yemen, after swiftly seizing the port city of Mokha, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) away. Mokha’s location makes it crucial to controlling shipping through the Red Sea.
Since then, the Houthis have tightened their grip around Taiz city, worsening an already grim humanitarian situation. Residents face severe shortages of drinking water and food as the rebels limit movement into the city.
Government forces are battling to push the Houthis back in the hills surrounding Taiz but have met fierce resistance, particularly to the east of the city. Analysts have said that seizing Taiz city is essential if the Houthis aim to press south toward Aden and Lahj, though experts have previously cautioned that such an advance would be difficult.
A string of deadly attacks
Friday’s bloodshed follows other mass-casualty attacks in recent months. Last month, Houthi ballistic missiles struck a government military camp in the southern province of Shabwa, killing at least 75 soldiers and wounding about 200 recruits. The rebels acknowledged at the time that they had targeted the camp.
In September, the Houthis accused Saudi Arabia of bombing a prison in Hazm, the capital of northern Jawf province. The facility collapsed when coalition strikes hit the area, killing at least 23 people.
Competing narratives in a war with few witnesses
The dueling accounts of Friday’s attack illustrate one of the most persistent challenges in Yemen’s conflict: establishing basic facts. The two sides are not merely disputing who fired the weapons. They disagree on whether airstrikes happened at all. The Houthi version describes Saudi warplanes, a specific air base and a precise timeline.
The government version rules out an air attack entirely and implies the damage came from Houthi missiles. Both explanations cannot be true, and with independent verification not yet possible, the death toll itself rests on figures supplied by one party to the war.
That information vacuum matters. Access for independent journalists and investigators in contested areas of Yemen is severely limited, and both sides operate media outlets that serve as instruments of the conflict.
Al-Masirah’s footage, while showing clear destruction, cannot on its own establish what caused it. Any credible accounting will likely depend on forensic evidence such as munition fragments, crater analysis and witness testimony that may take weeks to gather, if it is gathered at all.
The stakes of attribution are significant. If Saudi aircraft were involved, the strike would mark a serious escalation in Riyadh’s direct military role at a time when Saudi Arabia has sought to reduce its exposure in Yemen.
If Houthi missiles were responsible, it would add to a pattern of rebel strikes that have inflicted heavy casualties, including the Shabwa camp attack last month.
Either way, the location of the attack is telling. Al-Waziyah lies in a province that has become the war’s center of gravity. The Houthis’ capture of Mokha gave them leverage over a coastline critical to Red Sea shipping, and Taiz city now stands as a key obstacle between the rebels and the south.
As the front lines tighten, civilians caught inside the siege, already struggling to find water and food, face growing danger from fighting that increasingly reaches marketplaces and other crowded spaces.
The government media office’s call to protect markets and populated areas points to a broader concern: that the renewed fighting is eroding whatever restraint existed during earlier lulls in the war.
With each side blaming the other and outside scrutiny limited, there is little immediate prospect of accountability for the dead in al-Waziyah, and a real risk that attacks like Friday’s become more common as the battle for Taiz intensifies.
Sources: AP/Gulfnews
