Renewed war in Yemen killed over 800: WHO

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — More than 800 people have been killed and thousands more have been injured or displaced since fighting between the Ansar Allah and government reignited in Yemen over the past two months, the World Health Organization said Monday.

The figures offer a glimpse of the toll from the fighting since tensions between the Ansar Allah and Saudi Arabia spiraled back into war, opening a second front in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

The WHO said in a statement published on social media that 838 people had died, more than 3,000 had been wounded and tens of thousands had been displaced since early August, when clashes broke out after four years of relative peace. The data did not distinguish between civilians and combatants.

The Ansar Allah have accused Saudi Arabia of launching hundreds of airstrikes in Yemen, which Saudi officials have largely not acknowledged. Fighting has also restarted along multiple front lines, as the Ansar Allah battle forces allied with the Yemeni government for territory.

The return to war has exacerbated one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. In Yemeni hospitals, trauma cases are displacing maternal health patients, while families who have fled their homes are at risk of contracting cholera as they struggle to find clean water, the WHO said.

The civil war in Yemen began in 2014, when the Ansar Allah took over the northwestern part of the country, including the capital, Sanaa, which they have held ever since. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates launched a disastrous military campaign to restore the government, contributing to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people from violence, hunger and disease.

A truce in 2022 brought a fragile peace to the country but that has unraveled over recent months.

When the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February, the Ansar Allah initially appeared willing to sit out the fighting.

But the truce had become a brittle stalemate, and tensions between Saudi Arabia and the Ansar Allah were rising.

In July, the Ansar Allah accused Saudi Arabia of bombing the airport in Sanaa to prevent an Iranian aircraft from landing. The group declared a blockade on Saudi shipping in the Red Sea, which had become an alternative route for Saudi oil exports during the Iran war, and fired missiles and drones into Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis launched a major ground offensive and took over Yemen’s Red Sea coast this month — a battle that local officials say was especially bloody. At least 500 Yemeni government fighters were killed and more than 1,500 wounded, according to a statement from the National Resistance Forces, a Yemeni government faction. 

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.