Oxygen, food and water supplies running low and massacres taking place, says Nabil Shamsan

The Houthis are trying to send the city of Taiz back to the stone age, the city’s governor said in a briefing designed to urge the international community to do more to lift the month-long siege.

Nabil Shamsan said massacres were taking place in Yemen’s third city, that oxygen and water supplies were running out and that rubbish was piling up in the streets due to landfill sites being either full or inaccessible.

Exclusive: Coordinated airstrikes on territory held by al-Shabaab are driving the civilian population to find refuge alongside a river where rising water levels are a threat to safety. Is it a deliberate military strategy?

The water was rising rapidly. It had already reached Cayni Ali’s waist. Her home, five metres from the flooded River Juba in southern Somalia, never stood a chance. There was nowhere to go. Ali’s city of Jilib was under attack. Repeated airstrikes, said the mother of six, were pinning its population beside the rising river.

“The drones come all the time,” said the 27-year-old. “We hear them constantly. They kill animals, civilians. The town is big but destruction is everywhere.”