People search the rubble of homes in the Al Barh area of Maqbanah district, Taiz province, in a photo shared on X on October 29, 2026, after the airstrike. Photo: @Ghithalii via X
A Yemeni journalist in Sanaa shared photos on Friday of what he said were fragments of a US made bomb from Thursday’s airstrike in Taiz, which the health ministry in Sanaa says killed 12 people.
The ministry said in a statement on Thursday that, “as an initial toll, 12 citizens were killed and three others were critically injured” when Saudi aircraft struck the homes of the families of Ibrahim Saeed Mohammed Ahmed al Qouz and al Raabi Saeed Mohammed Ahmed al Qouz in the Al Barh area of Maqbanah district, west of Taiz city. The statement was carried by the Saba news agency in Sanaa and reported by AFP and Middle East Eye. Most of the dead were women and children, Al Masirah TV said.
Hussain Albukhaiti (@HussainBukhaiti), a journalist based in Sanaa, posted pictures on Friday of twisted metal pieces that he said came from an American MK 82 bomb, and said the strike hit the Al Habibah area of the Al Barh subdistrict on Thursday afternoon. Mereja Media could not verify the photos, where the fragments were found or what weapon was used, and the MK 82 claim is his own.
Early tolls varied. The Hodhod Yemen News Agency first reported eight people killed and five seriously wounded, citing the health ministry, before the ministry gave the figure of 12 dead. The Associated Press later reported, citing the same ministry, that at least 13 people were killed. A resident account, @MOHAMMEDEZZ94, wrote on Thursday that the attack had buried “an entire family of 15 people; only three survived.” Photos and videos shared on X by local accounts, including @Ghithalii, showed people digging through the rubble of flattened stone houses with their hands and shovels.
On Friday, the account @nasermoh29 posted photos of a woman sitting in rubble and said she was searching for her children and grandchildren after a new strike on Al Kamiliyah village in Al Barh. That report could not be confirmed, and no authority had given details of a second strike by Friday evening.
The Saudi led coalition and Yemen’s internationally recognized government did not comment on the reported strike, Xinhua reported. On Saturday, coalition spokesman Major General Turki al Maliki said air defenses had intercepted and destroyed a hostile drone in the Riyadh region, the Saudi Press Agency reported.
Taiz Governor Nabil Shamsan told reporters on Thursday that the government held city, home to about 1 million people, “is in famine, not on the brink of it,” blaming a Houthi siege that began in early October, the Associated Press reported. Houthi leader Abdul Malik al Houthi dismissed reports of a siege as “Saudi-fabricated claims,” saying “the way is open” for food and humanitarian needs.
On Saturday, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, the Houthi military spokesman in Sanaa, said on X that Saudi warplanes had carried out 66 airstrikes and missile strikes over the previous 24 hours on Sanaa and the provinces of Al Jawf, Taiz, Saada, Hajjah and Lahj. Mereja Media could not verify the figure.
Al Barh lies on the road between Taiz and the Red Sea coast at Mokha, an area where Houthi and government forces have been fighting on several fronts since hostilities resumed in August. Fighting has intensified across Taiz province, and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on Monday that severe access restrictions had pushed health needs in Taiz city to critical levels, with shortages of medicine, fuel and water.
More than 1,600 people have been killed in Yemen since the fighting resumed, and more than 275,000 have been displaced, according to UN figures cited by Middle East Eye. The World Health Organization said this week that more than 9,000 people have been killed or wounded since August.
The health ministry in Sanaa called the strike “a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law” and asked humanitarian and human rights organizations to condemn it, Hodhod reported.