Yemen: hundreds of bodies buried by Houthis in mass graves

Reports have emerged of enforced disappearances and mass arrests targeting civilians in areas controlled by Houthi forces, after a period of action by the group to crack down on dissent, according to Asharq Al-Awsat on October 3rd.

The reports have emerged after Yemeni sources spoke of mass burials of bodies that remain unidentified, which has incidentally raised concerns that Houthi authorities are performing extrajudicial execution within detention centres.

The Yemeni sources point to al-Jawf province, where 13 bodies were buried in a mass grave by the militant group, a location that is far away from being closely monitored by the International Committee of the Red Cross, or indeed the country’s own judicial authorities.

The sources claim that the corpses in question were held in a freezer inside the state-run hospital of Al-Hazm.

Currently, hundreds of families in al-Jawf are searching for the remains of loved ones. The relatives in question disappeared months or even years ago.

All the while, the Houthi authorities either refuse, or fail, to disclose the identities of the deceased. In turn, this makes the objective of learning the names of victims incredibly hard, as Houthis do not reveal the status of the detained in question. However, relatives searching for their loved suspect the deceased died after suffering through torture at the hands of the Houthis, or were killed as part of internal purges.

In early September 2025, Houthis reported the burial of 320 bodies in Sanaa and Amran provinces, with 126 being buried in Sanaa province and 194 in Amran province. Houthi authorities claim the bodies were unidentified.

Activists and lawyers, however, dispute this, claiming the bodies were likely to be among the many groups of detainees and forcibly disappeared individuals, or Houthi forces killed in combat, whose identities remain unverified.

According to Amran province’s local authorities, senior Houthi leadership were directly overseeing the burial of 194 bodies in mass graves. They purportedly did so without informing either the security agencies under Houthi control, or prosecutors, while also completely cutting-out any involvement whatsoever from the Red Cross.

Yemeni activists have denounced the mass burials, saying that the Houthis actions are in fact representative of a humanitarian crime.

Houthis have been tightening security in the country in order to suppress potential celebrations around the “26 September Revolution.” These heightened security measures are the backdrop to the burials in al-Jawf, Sanaa and Amran, and come after a sharp uptick in enforced disappearances and kidnappings.

The Monitoring and Documentation Unit at the Capital Media Center has said in a report that the Houthis carried out over 182 breaches of human rights in the month of August alone.

These violations included killings, injuries, arrests, kidnappings, and enforced disappearances, according to the report.

The General People’s Congress party (also known as the Sanaa faction), saw approximately 100 of its members and leaders abducted within the same time frame, including a high-level official of the Socialist Baath Party.

But it’s important to note that the Houthis have not limited themselves to national competitors or dissidents, with the Houthis also abducting 11 United Nations staff alongside six of their ex-local workers, as well as raiding workspaces of global organisations.

Businesses were also subjected to raids and violence, with the same report documenting 12 such raids on traders and residents in Yemen’s capital of Sanaa. The report also documented four cases of intimidation targeting women and children.

The situation highlights the desperation of the Yemeni people in Houthi-controlled areas amid a breakdown in humanitarian conditions in the country, coupled with the justice system’s inability to function to protect people and tackle increasingly dark security practices.

Asharq Al-Awsat, Maghrebi.org