Taiz: Warnings of a disaster as the sale of unusable water may be a cause of cancer outbreaks.
Arabian Sea Newspaper - Special
Taiz ((Arabian Sea)) Follow-ups: Local sources and activists in Taiz Governorate reported on Monday, July 28, 2025, that some people in an area west of the city are selling water unfit for human consumption to owners of water tankers, who then transport it to the city of Taiz and sell it to citizens. Local residents in the Bani Issa area of Jabal Habashi district said that the water being sold is extracted from polluted surface wells that are not even suitable for watering livestock, and it is being filled into water tankers and sold inside the city of Taiz as suitable for human consumption, in the complete absence of official oversight. The residents confirmed that the water being sold poses a danger to the lives of citizens and may be a cause of the spread of serious diseases such as cancerous tumors as a result of containing bacteria and harmful substances, appealing to the local authority and the concerned authorities to tighten control over the sources of filling water tankers and protect the population from the risk of pollution in light of the continuing water crisis. Activists from Taiz published photos documenting the locations from which water is filled in the Al-Saada Al-Mayan area in Azlat Bani Issa, 2.5 kilometers from the Jabal Habashi intersection market on the Al-Dhabab line. The photos showed surface wells that appeared polluted and their water was rotten, making them unsuitable for human or animal use. The activist Sadiq Al-Maliki, in turn, said that satellite images taken of the region during the past years show dangerous indicators of clear environmental degradation, adding that the images reflect the presence of dark spots and deteriorated lands, which suggests that the soil has been exposed to multiple forms of pollution, whether due to sewage leakage, the accumulation of toxic organic materials, or poor waste management. Al-Maliki said in a post on Facebook that we monitored that the situation requires urgent intervention to conduct comprehensive field analyzes of the soil, including testing the pH, the percentage of salts and heavy metals, in addition to analyzing water samples if there are nearby streams. He called for urgent intervention by the local authority, the General Water Corporation, and the Public Health Laboratory to conduct accurate tests of water and soil (including pH, salts, and heavy metals), to fill in the polluted wells, and to hold accountable everyone who participates in transporting water from them to residential neighborhoods. For months, the city of Taiz has been witnessing a severe water crisis, specifically in drinking water, where the price of a 20-liter gallon of water has reached 1,000 riyals, as a result of the siege imposed by the militia and the scarcity of rainwater. In recent days, the local authorities have tried to find temporary and permanent solutions to the water crisis, including holding meetings with international organizations to reach an agreement allowing Taiz to be supplied with water from the wells under the control of the Houthis north and northwest of the city.
