--- title: "Families of Slain Houthi Fighters Say the Group’s Aid Doesn’t Cover the Bills" description: "Yemen’s government says it has killed or wounded 16,100 Houthis since Oct. 5, while fuel prices in Houthi areas have risen 10 percent." author: "rews desk" published: 2026-10-31T05:48:25Z modified: 2026-10-31T11:03:37Z url: https://rews.cc/a/families-of-slain-houthi-fighters-say-the-group-s-aid-doesn--59941a language: en tags: ["yemen", "war", "houthi", "military", "economy", "mideast"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Families of Slain Houthi Fighters Say the Group’s Aid Doesn’t Cover the Bills *Yemen’s government says it has killed or wounded 16,100 Houthis since Oct. 5, while fuel prices in Houthi areas have risen 10 percent.* By rews desk · October 31, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/families-of-slain-houthi-fighters-say-the-group-s-aid-doesn--59941a ## In brief - Families of Houthi fighters killed in Yemen say the group’s food aid is irregular and too small to live on - Yemen’s government says it has killed or wounded 16,100 Houthis since its offensive began on Oct. 5 - A Houthi missile strike in Shabwa on Oct. 19 killed more than 70 government soldiers - Fuel prices in Houthi-held areas have risen 10 percent, and a Houthi representative said martyrs are ‘too many’ - The WFP says 18.3 million Yemenis face severe food insecurity and it may cut aid in November without new money Families of Houthi fighters killed in Yemen’s widening war say the food baskets the group sends them arrive only a few times a year and leave them paying for rent and fuel on their own, [Al Jazeera reported on Saturday](https://aljazeera.com/features/2026/10/31/after-the-martyrs-funeral-the-families-left-behind-by-yemens-war). There are more of those families every week. The internationally recognized government, which [opened an offensive against the Houthis](https://rews.cc/a/yemeni-family-flees-houthi-offensive-as-army-claims-1-540-re-ed1dc5) on Oct. 5, said at one point that its forces had killed or wounded 1,540 Houthis in a single 24-hour period. It later raised the total to 16,100 Houthi fighters and commanders killed or wounded since the offensive began. The figures could not be independently verified. The Houthis have killed hundreds of government troops as well, including more than 70 soldiers in an Oct. 19 missile strike on a security camp in Shabwa. In Sanaa, which the Houthis have held since September 2014, pickups carry the dead to the cemetery with armed men riding in the back beside the bodies, Al Jazeera’s staff reported. A song called “Our martyrs are our greats” plays loudly from the trucks as they pass. Akram, 23, who was identified only by his first name, lost his brother Abdulaziz on Oct. 10 in Dhubab, on the Red Sea coast. Abdulaziz was 21. The Houthis had recruited him two months earlier. The brothers had worked as day laborers in construction and farming and put their wages together to support a family of six. The death “broke us and robbed us of peace of mind,” Akram said. He described himself now as “like a bird with one wing.” Fuel in Houthi-held areas has recently gone up 10 percent. Akram said nobody waives a bill because a relative died at the front. “You have to pay or starve to death,” he said. Ali Yahia, 55, lost a son four years ago on the Saudi border. The Houthi authorities send him baskets of flour, oil, rice and sugar two to four times a year, he said, and fair compensation would be at least $200 a month. He gets by on what his two other sons earn, one as a delivery rider and the other in a restaurant. Ali Mohammed, a Houthi representative, didn’t dispute that the support was thin. “Martyrs today are too many,” he said. The group spreads its aid so that every family receives something, Mr. Mohammed said, and a complete Houthi victory would let it take better care of them. “This will take time.” The Houthi Ministry of Youth and Sports marked Martyrs’ Day on Oct. 25. Ali Hadban, an official there, praised the dead fighters’ sacrifices and called for support for their families. Adel Dashela, of the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, called the public glorification of dead fighters “an alien practice” in Yemen. He said it normalizes violence and encourages children to put their lives at risk. Families may feel pushed to join in the ceremonies, Mr. Dashela said, though the rituals do nothing to ease what they are going through, and it is often women and children who become the breadwinners after a death. The fighting has landed on a country already short of food. According to the World Food Program, 18.3 million Yemenis face severe food insecurity and 2.2 million children under 5 are [acutely malnourished](https://rews.cc/a/yemen-has-2-2m-acutely-malnourished-children-and-a-response--26ddcc). In government-held areas the agency can reach, the share of households without enough to eat climbed to 74 percent within weeks of the escalation, [Al Jazeera reported on Oct. 2](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/2/three-in-four-households-go-hungry-in-parts-of-yemen-amid-fighting-un). “The effect of this latest flare-up of insecurity on the food security situation threatens to be absolutely devastating,” Matthew Hollingworth, the agency’s assistant executive director for program operations, told reporters in Geneva that day. The United Nations estimated that the war had killed 377,000 people by the end of 2021, counting direct and indirect causes. Fighting around Taiz has since [displaced nearly 260,000 people](https://rews.cc/a/un-says-nearly-260-000-are-displaced-as-fighting-intensifies-45812c), and the WFP said in a [mid-October statement](https://www.wfp.org/news/wfp-warns-escalating-yemen-conflict-cutting-life-saving-assistance-city-taiz) that the conflict had cut off assistance to 800,000 people in the city. The agency said it needs $268 million to keep its Yemen programs running through 2027 and that without new money it would have to cut assistance significantly starting in November.