Houthi missiles strike Yemen religious school, killing at least 10 civilians

Two ballistic missiles tore through a religious school and mosque in the Yemeni city of Marib on a Sunday evening in late October, killing at least ten people and wounding twenty-five others. The facility, known as Dar al-Hadith, sits in the al-Aumd neighborhood and serves as both an educational institution and place of worship. Among the dead and injured were women and children. The impact also damaged homes nearby, according to officials who described the strike but asked not to be named, citing restrictions on speaking to the press.

The Houthis, an Iranian-backed rebel group, claimed no immediate responsibility for the attack. But the timing and method pointed directly to them. For months, the rebels have been pushing to seize Marib, an oil-rich province in Yemen's center, as part of a larger campaign to consolidate control over the country's northern half. The facility itself had once housed roughly twelve hundred Muslim students from across Yemen, though most had evacuated the previous month as Houthi forces advanced in the region.

Yemen has been locked in civil war since 2014, when the Houthis stormed the capital, Sanaa, and forced the internationally recognized government under President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi to flee south, then eventually to Saudi Arabia. A Saudi-led coalition intervened the following year, attempting to restore Hadi's government to power. Seven years later, the conflict had calcified into stalemate while spawning what the international community describes as the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe.

The missile strike on Dar al-Hadith was not an isolated incident. Moammar al-Iryani, the information minister of Yemen's internationally recognized government, characterized it as part of a pattern. Just four days earlier, a Houthi ballistic missile had struck the home of a prominent tribal leader in the same al-Aumd neighborhood, killing at least eleven civilians and wounding sixteen. Two days after the school attack, Houthi forces shelled a residential area called Camp on the outskirts of Taiz, another government-held city, killing at least three children from a single family and wounding at least six other children.

Al-Iryani described the school bombing as a "horrific massacre," part of what he called a series of systematic killings targeting civilians in Marib and Taiz over recent days. The characterization underscored the escalating toll on non-combatants as the Houthis pressed their territorial ambitions. The rebels' push to capture Marib represents a strategic objective—controlling the province would give them dominion over much of Yemen's oil wealth and further entrench their grip on the north. But that objective is being pursued through attacks on civilian infrastructure: schools, homes, neighborhoods where families live.

The international community has largely watched from a distance as Yemen's war deepens. The Saudi-led coalition, despite years of intervention, has not dislodged the Houthis or restored the government to meaningful control. The Houthis, for their part, continue to advance and consolidate, seemingly willing to absorb international condemnation in exchange for territorial gains. Civilians caught between these forces—students and teachers, families in residential neighborhoods, children sleeping in their homes—bear the cost of a conflict that shows no sign of resolution.