Yemen: 14 civilians killed by Houthi rockets in Taiz

Yemen residents on Monday said Houthi rockets killed 14 civilians, mostly children, as Reuters reported on August 24th that fighting intensified for control of Yemen’s third largest city, Taiz.
The Saudi-led coalition opposing the Houthis also launched air raids on military bases and Houthi positions in the southwestern city during the fighting, residents said, but no casualties were reported.
Fighters loyal to Yemen’s exiled government have been contesting control of Taiz — known as Yemen’s cultural capital — with the Houthis since April. Hundreds of combatants and civilians have been killed.
The northern-based Houthis, a Shi’ite Muslim group, took control of Yemen’s capital Sanaa last September. Arab countries intervened in the conflict in March to halt a Houthi advance into the south which caused the Saudi-backed government to flee to Riyadh from its refuge in the southern port of Aden.
Months of air strikes and arms deliveries by the rich Gulf states to government loyalists began to pay off last month, when they seized back Aden and made surprise gains toward Yemen’s north and Sanaa.
Gulf Arab states view the Houthis as a proxy for their archrival, Iran.
The United Nations is working to broker a political compromise to end the civil war which has killed over 4,300 people and avoid a showdown in the Houthis’ northern heartland.