Taiz, Yemen – “Why did they kill my child, my source of strength?” Umm Ibrahim asked as she sat in the home of a relative, mourning the loss of her 14-year-old son, Ibrahim.

The child was killed on his way to school on Sunday with his younger siblings, shot by a sniper.

The family and other locals have blamed Yemen’s Houthi rebels for the killing. The Houthis have besieged the largely government-controlled Taiz in central Yemen for 11 years. It lies on the front line of the war between the Houthis and the Yemeni government – one that has largely been frozen since 2022 but which can still lead to violent incidents, such as Ibrahim’s killing.

“What did a small child do?” Umm Ibrahim asked as she sobbed bitterly at the still raw wound. “He was carrying a schoolbag on his back. Why was he assassinated in such an unjust, criminal way?”

Umm Ibrahim had already lost her husband nearly a decade ago after he disappeared under what she called mysterious circumstances. Ibrahim, her eldest child, quickly became someone she could rely on as they struggled to survive in the war-torn and economically deprived Taiz.

‘Thought he was joking’

A sadness hangs over al-Dairi Kilabah, the family’s neighbourhood in northeastern Taiz, where the killing took place.

Families wary of more killings have told their children to stay inside.

Along a windy stretch of road lined with homes still largely damaged from the most intense years of the fighting in Taiz from 2015 to 2017, a government soldier warned that the area was still dangerous.

At various spots he pointed out hanging panels placed on iron posts, intended to block the view of snipers based in Houthi-controlled areas to the north. But the panels have not been effective enough to prevent shootings becoming a semiregular occurence.

Taiz’s mountainous geography gives snipers numerous vantage points from which to shoot down into the city. A 2025 report from the United Nations Civilian Impact Monitoring Project found that 66 percent of sniper killings in Yemen took place in the city of Taiz and the wider governorate with the same name – with 21 deaths, including nine children. Civilians in Taiz have also been killed by shelling and drone attacks.

“Whatever you do, don’t make a mistake and pass through there,” the soldier said as he pointed to the opposite side of the road. “A sniper hiding in one of those buildings will see you, and this could be your last day.”

Ibrahim had been travelling along the same stretch of road, about 150 metres (500ft) from his home, when he was shot. Locals estimated that the sniper was roughly a kilometre (0.6 miles) away.

His 11-year-old sister, Baraa, told Al Jazeera that Ibrahim had been walking beside her and joking happily before he suddenly stopped, staggered into her arms and then fell to the ground.

Baraa explained that she didn’t understand what had happened and thought he might be playing a trick. But then she saw the blood gushing from his body, which led the girl to lose consciousness.

Umm Ibrahim was at home waiting for her children.

“I prepared lunch and waited for them as usual, but they didn’t arrive,” she said. “Instead, a motorbike rider came and told me the ill-omened news before leaving – as if he was just talking about something matter of fact.”

She has now decided to keep Baraa and her younger brother, nine-year-old Ayman, home for the rest of the school year as they struggle to deal with the psychological trauma of Ibrahim’s death.

Local anger

The killing quickly led to an outpouring of anger in Taiz, where people have suffered for years under Houthi attacks. There was a mass turnout for Ibrahim’s funeral on Monday as locals expressed solidarity with victims of the sniper shootings.

On Tuesday, a number of local schools also organised protest vigils with students holding up banners denouncing the killing, and expressing fear for their own futures.

Taiz’s government-run Education Office condemned the killing in a statement, calling it a “cowardly terrorist” act.

“When a sniper points the muzzle of his rifle at a child wearing a school uniform, the message is clear: There is no sacred space,” said Najib al-Kamali, the head of the Alef Observatory for the Protection of Education and Children’s Rights, a Yemeni nongovernmental organisation.

“Under international law, students are ‘protected persons’, but in Taiz, the student has become a target,” al-Kamali added. “Targeting a child going through their educational journey is an act that goes beyond a violation to the level of a symbolic assassination of hope within a society, by striking its most innocent and ambitious segment.”

“If we deal with the sniping of children as isolated incidents rather than as systematic war crimes, we risk creating an entire generation of illiterate people hunted by fear, simply because the price of receiving an education in Taiz has become the loss of one’s life.”