🇫🇷🇬🇧 Journalist & photographer | Yemen, conflict & humanitarian affairs | Mine action with @Masam_ENG | Trustee @DatumFoundation
London, UK
Joined February 2010
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Over recent months, I’ve helped research and write Project Masam’s new #investigation, #Yemen’s hidden #maternitycrisis, surveying our teams and working with colleagues to gather field evidence and stories from affected women and families.
Today we publish what we found: shorturl.at/TorX8
NEW INVESTIGATION | #Yemen’s hidden maternity crisis: How landmines are harming mothers and babies
Project Masam field evidence and survivor accounts reveal how #explosive contamination can put pregnancy and newborn health at risk, disrupting access to urgent #healthcare, food, water and safe return after displacement.
Read/download: shorturl.at/Dr9qN #MineAction
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Watching the fighting push back into civilian areas south and south-west of #Taiz is genuinely devastating. The videos carry such an awful familiarity. The spectre of some of the darkest days of 2015 is back: families unsafe in their own homes, roads cut, and access to food, fuel and medicine becoming harder just as the fighting closes in. For anyone who knows Taiz, this is very hard to watch. #Yemen
#Taiz Under Fire | October 12, 2026 | The Houthis are terrorizing the women and children of the besieged city of Taiz tonight, subjecting residential neighborhoods to relentless artillery shelling. Residents describe scenes reminiscent of the darkest nights of 2015, as explosions shake the city and terrified children cry inside their homes. More than 15 artillery shells have reportedly struck residential areas within a single hour tonight.
According to the Taiz Human Rights Office, Houthi shelling of residential villages in rural Taiz killed five civilians and wounded several others, including five-year-old Ahlam Abdul Salam Abd, who was killed inside her family’s home in Haysaban, al-Misrakh District.
Inside Taiz city, at least 17 civilians, including women, children, and elderly residents, were wounded over the past 24 hours, while seven homes sustained damage.
Earlier, a young boy, Hussam Anwar al-Sharabi, suffered shrapnel wounds when Houthi shelling struck his family’s home in the al-Dahi neighborhood of southwestern Taiz while he was asleep in his bedroom. His father, Anwar Saeed, said his family remains determined to stay in the city despite the shelling, stressing that countless other families are enduring the same attacks.
Tonight, families across Taiz are once again sheltering inside their homes as artillery fire continues to hit civilian neighborhoods. For a city that has endured years of siege, bombardment, and suffering since 2015, the terror of those years has returned.
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The sheer number of #Houthi anti-tank #landmines in this footage is extraordinary, and this is only part of what is shown. Rows of mines across open ground, with men in civilian clothes removing them by hand and without PPE. This is the scale of renewed contamination now being uncovered on #Yemen’s #RedSea Coast.
#MineAction
تعكس الكميات الكبيرة من الألغام والعبوات الناسفة التي زرعتها الميليشيات الحوثية في المناطق التي سيطرت عليها -لعدة أيام- إصرار هذه الفئة الضالة على مواصلة ارتكاب المجازر في حق الشعب اليمني.
وفي هذا السياق؛ فقد أعلنت العديد من الجهات حالة الاستنفار لنزع هذه الألغام الحوثية.
شكراً لكل من يسهم الآن في إنقاذ أبناء #اليمن من هذا الخطر.. شكر خاص لرجال القوات المسلحة اليمنية وألوية العمالقة ودرع الوطن والمقاومة التهامية.
#فجر_اليمن
#مسام_مشروع_حياة
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Elsa Buchanan retweeted
More than five #children a day were killed or injured by explosive ordnance including #landmines in #Yemen between 2020 and 2025 and the true toll may be higher because of underreporting.
#Explosive ordnance was the single biggest recorded cause of child casualties. Project Masam works to remove these deadly hazards and protect children in Yemen.
Elsa Buchanan retweeted
المملكة ومنذ توحيدها أخذت على عاتقها وسخرت كافة إمكاناتها لرعاية مصالح الأمتين العربية والإسلامية ودعم السلم والأمن والرخاء في كافة أنحاء العالم.
#اليوم_الوطني_السعودي_٩٦
#Yemen’s frontlines are moving again, but territorial gains tell only part of the story.
Can government-aligned forces hold their gains? Is greater military coordination sustainable? How much pressure can the #Houthis absorb? And what does renewed war mean for civilians already facing a severe #humanitariancrisis, displacement and renewed explosive contamination?
My first Substack, based entirely on open-source and publicly available reporting: shorturl.at/WRyuf
Written independently and in a personal capacity.
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What struck me most while working on this investigation was how little we hear about what landmine contamination can mean during #pregnancy and after a baby is born in #Yemen. Women have died trying to reach maternity care. Others are living through pregnancy amid severe #hunger, struggling to reach safe water or #healthcare, or facing the decision of whether it is safe to return home after displacement. These stories deserve far greater attention. shorturl.at/reMqA
ALT A young mother and her infant daughter pose for a photo on the Al Khokha-Hays road in Al-Hudaydah Governorate, Yemen. Credit: Elsa Buchanan for Project Masam
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A final point: much of what I know about the scale and complexity of #Yemen’s #explosive contamination comes from my work with @Masam_ENG and its demining teams on the ground. Project Masam continues to clear mines, IEDs and UXO across affected areas, including many of the communities I’ve discussed in this thread. >> As the security picture changes, that work (and humanitarian #MineAction more broadly) will only become more important.
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I have spent time in #Mokha, #Taiz and #AlDhale documenting what previous phases of this #war left behind: contaminated farms and homes, people living with life-changing injuries, and communities rebuilding while frontlines remained close. Some of those same areas are now seeing renewed #military activity.
What happens if those frontlines move again across #Yemen?
Read my latest analysis: shorturl.at/UFYOK
ALT Mosaid Mohammed Ali Naji at his home in Al Dhale, Yemen. He lost part of his leg and suffered extensive abdominal injuries in an IED blast; dozens of mines were also found in and around his home. © Elsa Buchanan
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If violence continues to intensify, #Yemen risks another layer of #explosive contamination being added to an already extraordinarily complex one.
The problem is cumulative: new UXO from strikes, new contamination associated with shifting #frontlines and defensive positions, layered over minefields and IED belts/contamination from earlier phases of the #war and, in some areas, legacy contamination dating back decades.
ALT Looking towards Houthi positions in the mountains south-west of Taiz, Yemen. © Elsa Buchanan
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This escalation is unfolding against an already acute #humanitariancrisis. Millions of #Yemenis face severe or emergency levels of #foodinsecurity, while tens of thousands are living in catastrophic, famine-like conditions. Health services, household purchasing power and other basic services have also been severely eroded.
>> Renewed fighting risks compounding each of these pressures: disrupting markets and aid, driving further displacement, and making productive farmland, fishing grounds and access routes unsafe precisely when communities can least afford to lose them. #Yemen
ALT A petrol station on the Taiz–Al Turbah road, a key route connecting Taiz with southern Yemen. © Elsa Buchanan
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In #Yemen, contamination is not always simply a legacy of fighting. #Landmines and IEDs have also been used by Houthi forces for land denial (around homes, farmland and access routes) making territory difficult for communities to return to and use after it changes hands >> In a #conflict where local armed communities can themselves form part of territorial defence, displacement and the denial of safe return can also have military significance.
ALT Radwan Mohammed with his daughters Ilham and Iman outside their home in Al Jadanah, Al Dhale, where the girls discovered anti-personnel mines while playing marbles. © Elsa Buchanan
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One problem with renewed fighting across these fronts in #Yemen is cumulative contamination. New #artillery and #missile strikes can leave UXO across areas already affected by #landmines and IEDs, while changing defensive positions can create new suspected hazardous areas. Land previously surveyed, cleared or returned to civilian use may therefore need to be reassessed.
#MineAction
ALT Amar Mohamed Abdu on his farmland near Mokha, Taiz Governorate, Yemen, pointing to disturbed ground where an anti-tank mine was removed. © Elsa Buchanan
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The geography matters. Activity has been reported around #Mokha, west of #Taiz, across the Qatabah and Al-Fakher fronts in #AlDhale, in northern #Lahj and around #Marib. These are established frontlines running through or close to populated areas.
For the communities living alongside them, renewed fighting has consequences far beyond the immediate exchange of fire. #Yemen
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I’ve been very quiet on here for a long time, but #Yemen has rather pulled me back in.
After several years of relative frontline stasis, there are worrying signs of the conflict entering a more active phase: repeated missile and #drone attacks, renewed fighting across several fronts, pressure on #Mokha and the #RedSea coast, and new capabilities, including #FPV drones, appearing on the battlefield.
ALT Mokha, Yemen, during previous fieldwork. © Elsa Buchanan
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Elsa Buchanan retweeted
Based on years of clearance work, Project Masam issues a warning: indications of potential #Houthi mobilisation even without imminent #fighting - can signal new minefields in civilian areas, posing immediate risks to civilian communities across key areas of #Yemen.
Read: shorturl.at/kYATY #MineAction
Elsa Buchanan retweeted
A civilian from Al Durayhimi #Yemen said mobilisation itself became a #warning sign for residents, based on past experience. He described #landmines being laid openly in front of civilians, forming mine “belts” that cut families off from homes and farmland. "They planted the mines in front of us. We were told not to go back." He later lost his leg to a mine.
#MineAction
Elsa Buchanan retweeted
A professional with #demining experience from Houthi-controlled Al Durayhimi, Hudaydah, exclusively told us mine-laying intensified during #Houthi mobilisation, even when movements appeared aimed at regrouping or testing responses. “Every time tensions rose,” he said, “the planting of #landmines was intensified.”
#MineAction #Yemen
After speaking with civilians and deminers from #Houthi-controlled #Yemen, one thing stayed with me: mobilisation itself has become a warning sign. Past movements were followed by #landmines and #IEDs in civilian spaces. Hearing similar signals again is worrying right now.
Exclusive investigation: Unverified reports of #Houthi mobilisation across parts of #Yemen are prompting concern, based on patterns documented during earlier phases of the #conflict. The reason? Fears of new minefields in civilian areas.
Read our report: shorturl.at/Gt8Lt
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