Yemen's Displaced Families Skip Meals as Renewed Fighting Deepens Hunger Crisis

Mohamed Saed's children still invite him to join them at the dinner table, but the 46-year-old teacher frequently claims he has already eaten. In reality, he often goes without food so that his family can have whatever is available. "We no longer eat three meals," he told Al Jazeera. "Maybe two meals and sometimes one meal." Saed has not been paid a salary in years, and he and his wife and five children now live in a single room in Taiz, displaced multiple times since Yemen's war began more than a decade ago. He is more than a year behind on rent.

His family's struggle predates the latest surge in violence, but a new escalation that started in early September has made an already dire situation worse. According to UNICEF, nearly 134,000 people have been forced from their homes since the fighting intensified, including an estimated 73,000 children. For families like Saed's, the question is no longer whether they will eat, but which meals they can afford to skip.

Yemen has been effectively divided since the Iran-aligned Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, in 2014. The Houthis now control the north and west, where most Yemenis live, while the internationally recognised government, backed by Saudi Arabia, holds most of the south and east. This split has left millions of civilians caught between rival authorities and exposed to repeated rounds of displacement.

The latest front lines were redrawn on September 3, when the Houthis launched a major offensive west of Taiz. Within days, Houthi fighters entered Mocha and have since taken control of almost all of Yemen's Red Sea coastline, extending down to the Bab al-Mandeb strait, a critical chokepoint for global shipping. Saudi Arabia has responded with hundreds of air strikes, while the Houthis have launched drone and missile attacks on Saudi territory.

The human cost has been severe. The World Health Organization reports that 838 people have been killed and more than 3,600 injured since early August, when the Houthis began striking government forces. Most of those casualties have occurred since the ground offensive began on September 3. In the week ending September 26 alone, 164 people were killed. UNICEF has verified that at least 15 children have been killed and 14 injured since September 3, with three more reported missing.

For Ruqqaya Saeed, a 25-year-old mother of eight, the violence arrived with terrifying speed. She fled Zaghar, in the Maqbanah area west of Taiz, where the Houthi offensive began, describing rockets, shells and the threat of landmines all at once. "We left our homes, and we left our livestock, the donkey and the chickens," she told Al Jazeera from al-Shaqadif camp near Taiz city. "We left everything up to God."

Life in the camp has brought little relief. Saeed says no aid organisation has delivered food to her family, and they survive on donations from charitable individuals. She borrowed money to buy a tarpaulin for shelter, but rainwater has already soaked through it twice, drenching their clothes. Her children are sick with diarrhoea, colds and dysentery. "We don't have water for them, not even clean water," she said. Dysentery, an intestinal infection spread by contaminated water and poor sanitation, can be deadly for young children because of dehydration. With no blankets to keep warm, Saeed treats her children at home using water, salt and sugar. The camp also lacks toilets, forcing women to wait until nightfall and walk to the mountainside or another isolated spot.

The scale of the hunger crisis extends far beyond individual camps. In a country of about 43 million people, more than 18.3 million face acute food insecurity in 2026, according to the United Nations. Children are among the hardest hit. Even before the latest fighting, more than 2.2 million children under five were projected to be acutely malnourished this year, including more than half a million with severe acute malnutrition, the deadliest form, according to UNICEF's Louise Wateridge. She warned that the conflict is driving a vicious cycle in which hunger leaves children more vulnerable to the violence around them.

In government-controlled areas, nearly five million people, about half the population there, faced crisis levels of hunger or worse between March and May, including 1.4 million in emergency conditions, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the global standard for measuring hunger. The IPC projected that conditions would worsen during the June to September lean season, with 5.3 million people facing crisis conditions or worse, including 1.6 million in emergency conditions. Even after the harvest, it expects 5.4 million people to remain at crisis levels or worse from October to December.

The displacement crisis continues to unfold. Enas Abdullah Abdo, 23, fled Hadhran with her three children on the second day of fighting. "Every hour, the shelling and clashes on us increased, and then when the shells eventually reached the houses, we were forced to leave," she said. Cars could no longer reach them, so the family set out on foot until they found one. "When we left, we didn't take anything," Abdo said. Like thousands of others, she now faces an uncertain future, having escaped with little more than her children.

Aid agencies warn that without urgent funding and unimpeded access, the situation will deteriorate further. Yemen's war has already disrupted roads and ports, making it harder to deliver food and medical supplies to those who need them most. The latest fighting has added new obstacles, cutting off communities and forcing families to move repeatedly in search of safety and sustenance. For parents like Saed and Saeed, each day is a calculation of how to stretch what little they have. The meals they once shared are now a memory, replaced by the quiet sacrifice of adults who tell their children they are not hungry.