ADEN — Fighting on Yemen's southern fronts intensified sharply on Tuesday, November 3, as two Houthi ballistic missiles struck a public market in the government-controlled province of Lahj, killing one person and wounding 10 others, a military official with Yemen's government forces told Xinhua on condition of anonymity. Hours of strikes followed across the neighbouring province of Taiz: Houthi-run al-Masirah TV reported that an airstrike hit a plastic footwear factory north of Taiz city, killing three people and wounding eight, and attributed the strike to Saudi warplanes, saying civil defence teams were battling a fire at the site. Al-Masirah also reported that two people, including a woman, were killed and five others injured in an airstrike on the Ash Shamayatayn district in southern Taiz, Xinhua reported. In all, at least six people were killed and more than 23 wounded across Lahj and Taiz on Tuesday, according to the military and Houthi media reports.

Source: Xinhua via IANS / The Freedom Press

The strikes came as Houthi forces advanced through the mountainous Al-Maqatirah district in Taiz toward Tur al-Bahah, a government-held district on the routes leading toward Aden — the southern port city that serves as the interim capital of Yemen's internationally recognised government. Government forces, supported by the Saudi-led coalition, have been trying to halt the advance as ground battles and airstrikes intensify inside Yemen alongside Houthi missile and drone attacks on government-held areas and targets inside Saudi Arabia.

Source: Xinhua via IANS / The Freedom Press

Monday's attacks: a health centre and a market, 46 dead or injured

Tuesday's toll followed a deadlier Monday. Yemen's Ministry of Human Rights, in a statement issued from Aden on November 2, condemned what it called two crimes committed that day: ballistic missile attacks on the Al-Suqya Health Centre in the Al-Mudarabah district of Lahj governorate and on the Al-Najd popular market in the village of Al-Makh'af, in the Al-Aqroud area of Taiz governorate. The ministry said the health centre attack killed five people, including three members of the medical team, and injured 15 others, including seven medical personnel, while the shelling of the market left 26 civilians dead or injured — 46 people dead or injured across the two attacks, by its preliminary figures. It also condemned shelling of civilian homes in the village of Al-Rahn in the Saber Al-Mawadem district. Those are the Aden government's figures, attributed to its ministry; the Houthis have not published their own account of the Monday strikes.

Source: Yemen Ministry of Human Rights statement, Nov 2, 2026

An independent Yemeni documentation group put the wider 48-hour picture higher still. The Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms, in a report issued on Tuesday, said it had documented 164 violations in Taiz and Lahj over 48 hours, alongside approximately 450 projectiles fired at residential areas, and that the continuing attacks had killed approximately 28 civilians and injured 57 people. It said Monday's shelling of the Al-Suqya Health Centre killed or injured 20 people including healthcare workers, and that the missile attack on the Al-Najd market in Al-Misrakh district killed or injured approximately 30 civilians and damaged approximately 13 homes. The network's figures and the ministry's figures do not fully match — both are published here with their sources, and neither has been independently verified on the ground.

Source: Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms report, Nov 3, 2026

Each side's account — and a denial aimed at Mecca claims

The Saudi-led coalition had announced on Sunday that it carried out an operation to “neutralise vital resources” used by the Houthis, its spokesperson Turki Al-Malki said, describing it as a response to continued Houthi attacks — but the coalition has not confirmed the specific Tuesday strikes on the Taiz factory or Ash Shamayatayn that al-Masirah attributes to Saudi warplanes. On the other side, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said in a statement on X on Tuesday that the group's forces “did not carry out any operation toward Saudi territory today”, rejecting allegations that it had targeted the holy city of Mecca amid heightened cross-border tensions. The Houthis have separately said at least 17 people have been killed by Saudi shelling since Sunday across the governorates of Saada, Taiz, Lahj, Al-Jawf and Hodeidah — a Houthi claim reported by France 24's Arabic service and not independently verified.

Source: Xinhua via IANS / The Freedom Press; France 24 Arabic via reports

Background: the road to Aden runs through Taiz

Yemen has been at war since the Houthis seized the capital Sanaa and much of the north in late 2014, prompting a Saudi Arabia-led coalition to intervene in 2015 in support of the internationally recognised government. Taiz, in the southwest, has been besieged and fought over for years, and the Taiz–Lahj corridor is the land approach to Aden. The Aden government's human rights ministry says the current escalation in Taiz and neighbouring areas has been building since the beginning of September, with shelling of residential neighbourhoods, villages and markets, a tightening siege and closed supply routes. The Houthis, who are aligned with Iran, have widened the fight in recent weeks with missile and drone attacks inside Saudi Arabia even as the US–Iran war across the region raises the stakes on every front — which is why a market in Lahj and a factory in Taiz now sit inside a much larger war map.

Source: Xinhua via IANS; Yemen Ministry of Human Rights

What happens next

The immediate question is whether the Houthi advance through Al-Maqatirah reaches Tur al-Bahah and the Aden approaches, and whether the coalition answers Tuesday's factory and district strikes with a wider air campaign of its own. The humanitarian question is already answered in the documentation groups' ledgers: with health centres and markets now among the struck sites on consecutive days, civilians in Taiz and Lahj face the fighting with fewer working clinics and more dangerous trips for daily necessities. No ceasefire channel between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition has been announced, and Tuesday's denial-and-counterclaim pattern — each side publicising the other's attacks while denying or staying silent on its own — leaves the southern front on an escalating path toward Aden.

Source: Yemeni Network for Rights and Freedoms; Xinhua via IANS