The toll from days of fighting between government forces and Iran-backed Houthi rebels in southwest Yemen climbed past 300 on Sunday, as hundreds of families fled their homes to escape the violence.

Two military officials with the Saudi-backed government forces told AFP that 84 of their troops were killed between midday Saturday and early Sunday morning, mostly in missile attacks. Four Houthi military sources said 57 rebel fighters were killed in the same period.

The two sides have been fighting for days over control of a gateway to the Red Sea, in the deadliest flare-up in the Arabian Peninsula’s southernmost country since a 2022 ceasefire collapsed in July.

Families fleeing fighting in Maqbanah and Jabal Habashi in Taiz governorate in Yemen’s southwest took refuge at Al-Bareen camp for the internally displaced on Saturday.

And on Sunday, AFP journalists saw displaced people with mattresses, livestock and other belongings setting up shelters in another camp in the area.

“The shooting came at us from above and from below,” said Rawdhah Hasan, a woman displaced from Maqbanah.

“They surrounded us from every direction, we fled with our children without even putting on our shoes,” she added.

‘We are stranded here’

The Houthis launched an offensive on Thursday aiming to cut off the government-held port city of Mokha, under fire for weeks, and advance towards areas bordering the Bab al-Mandab strait at the southern entrance to the Red Sea.

A military official within the government told AFP that the rebels had succeeded on Saturday evening in “cutting off the road linking Taiz to Mokha”.

According to an AFP tally compiled using various military and medical sources from both sides of the conflict, more than 300 combatants and some civilians have been killed since the start of the Houthi assault.

Nimah Saif, another woman displaced from the Jabal Habashi district, said that “some people were injured and others were killed. We saw them lying on the ground, but we could not help anyone.”

“Now we are stranded here, hungry, with nothing to eat,” she added.

The UN agency for humanitarian coordination OCHA said on Friday that an estimated 1,790 households had been displaced following “intense shelling and clashes” in Maqbanah and Jabal Habashi districts.

A spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply concerned by the ongoing military clashes”, warning of “devastating political economic and security ramifications for Yemen and its people”.

One military official with the internationally recognised government based in Aden said fighting had subsided in the early hours of Sunday morning.

The official said government “forces were able to establish positions for themselves north of Hays after advancing in the area”, referring to a frontline district less than 30 kilometres (18.6 miles) inland from the Red Sea coast.

But the official added the Houthis had advanced west of Taiz, south of Hays, in their push towards the Bab al-Mandab.