More than 74,000 displaced in Yemen this year as Marib conflict rages: IOM

Almost 74,500 people in Yemen have been displaced in 2021 as a years-long conflict continues to rage in the Arab nation, a United Nations body said on Tuesday.

In its most recent weekly report on the situation in Yemen, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) said it "estimates that 12,413 households (74,478 [i]ndividuals) have experienced displacement at least once".

More than 3,000 people were displaced on one or more occasions in the week beginning 3 October, the IOM said, adding that conflict was the main reason for 99 percent of the week's displacement.

Much of the most recent displacement took place in the Marib, Shabwah and Al-Bayda provinces.

War continues to rage in Marib, as the Houthis attempt to seize the oil-rich province.

The province's capital, Marib city, is the last stronghold of the internationally recognised government in Yemen's north.

The Houthis claimed in a message issued on Tuesday that they were "on the edges of the city of Marib".

The insurgents recently lost more than 130 of their members to aerial bombardment, the international coalition fighting in Yemen claimed on Tuesday. The coalition is headed up by Saudi Arabia.

The violence in Yemen, which first surged seven years ago as the Houthi insurgents took the country's capital Sanaa, has caused "the world's worst humanitarian crisis".

Around 233,000 people had died as a result of the war by late 2020, the UN said.