Residents of Yemen’s Taiz hope for peace after truce

Residents of the war-ravaged city of Taiz, Yemen's largest city after Sanaa and Aden, are hoping life will return to normal in the wake of a recent ceasefire deal signed between the government and Houthi rebels.

Anadolu Agency visited Taiz's Jahmaliyyah district, which was massively damaged in recent clashes between the two warring parties in southwestern Yemen.

Buildings in areas once controlled by the rebels and the Daesh terrorist group -- along with much local infrastructure -- have been reduced to rubble, while most residents have fled the area.

Basic needs, including water and electricity, are in short supply, while the children lack access to education.

Jahmaliyyah resident Riyad Abdullah Abdulhamid said he, along with seven relatives, had lived in the neighborhood a long time.

According to Abdulhamid, the area used to be stable -- albeit impoverished -- before the war.

Residents, he told Anadolu Agency, had borne the brunt of the crisis, including acute food shortages.

"With the outbreak of the war, our neighborhood was severely affected," he said. "Electricity and water were cut, and due to explosives placed underground, our infrastructure and sewer system collapsed."

"Most residents were forced to leave, as it had become a warzone," he added. "We returned home in 2016 after Jahmaliyyah was liberated [from the Houthis]."

But clashes continued to erupt intermittently, Abdulhamid said, even though government forces had gained control of the area.

"We were seeing up to 70 bombings per day carried out by the Houthis and Daesh," he recalled. "The latter were trying to show the world that Jahmaliyyah was under its total control."

"At that time, the Houthis were using our neighborhood as a headquarters," he said. "Firing randomly, the Houthis at one point attempted to drive Daesh from the area."

Abdulhamid went on to urge the Turkish Red Crescent to continue sending humanitarian aid to the Yemeni people, with whom, he pointed out, Turkey had shared deep bonds since the Ottoman era.

Mohamed al-Amiri, another Jahmaliyyah resident who sustained a bullet wound to his head earlier this year during one of the clashes, thanked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish people for their continued largesse.

Yemen has been dogged by conflict since 2014, when Shia Houthi rebels overran much of the country, including capital Sanaa, forcing the government to take up temporary residence in the coastal city of Aden.

The following year, Saudi Arabia and several of its Arab allies launched a massive air campaign in Yemen aimed at retaking Houthi-held territory on behalf of the country's pro-Saudi government.

The campaign has devastated much of Yemen's basic infrastructure, including health and sanitation systems, prompting the UN to describe the situation as "one of the worst humanitarian disasters of modern times".