Time running out for Yemen’s Taiz after 20 days under Houthi siege, UN warns

Time is running out to get aid into Taiz, besieged by Houthis who are preventing supplies from reaching Yemen's third-largest city, the United Nations said on Friday. Houthi fighters have encircled Taiz since early October, blocking the road that links it to Aden, interim capital of Yemen’s internationally recognised government. "Safe, sustained and unimpeded humanitarian access is urgently needed so that essential supplies and life-saving assistance can reach people in need," said the UN humanitarian agency OCHA. "It's 20 days and counting since Taiz has been cut off," said OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke. "We are seeing increasingly that the fighting makes it impossible for us to get in and impossible for people to get out," he told a press conference in Geneva. Laerke said road closures and diesel shortages had halved the city's water production and roughly tripled the price of trucked water, which most residents depend on.