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Reuters correspondents visiting al-Bireen camp in Yemen’s Taiz province encountered Rawya Hassan, a 48-year-old mother of seven, who described fleeing bombardment with her family and leaving everything behind. “We are under terror, under the rockets, under the missiles,” Hassan said while preparing bread in a makeshift clay oven at the camp. The family had already been displaced eight years earlier from their village of al-Tuweir and had been living in a camp in al-Kadha district before the latest fighting forced them to move once more. Hassan recounted shells falling and aircraft overhead as they escaped without shoes or any possessions.
The International Organization for Migration has recorded at least 112,000 internally displaced by the fighting over the past two weeks, according to figures published by Reuters. Nearly 3,000 others have fled across the sea to Djibouti in overcrowded boats during the same period, an IOM assessment found. Displaced families consistently reported abandoning livestock, clothing, blankets and food supplies in their haste to escape the rapid Houthi advance through western coastal areas.
The Houthi offensive has pushed government forces back from positions along the Red Sea coast in Taiz and Hodeidah provinces, Reuters reported. Aid agencies have noted that many of those fleeing arrived with almost nothing after leaving suddenly due to shelling and frontline movements. The displacements add to a long-running humanitarian emergency in one of the world’s poorest countries where resources for shelter and assistance are already stretched.
In al-Bireen camp, families are sheltering in rudimentary shacks among acacia trees with limited access to basic necessities, the news agency detailed. Women were seen using donkeys to transport water as children played nearby in scenes captured by a Reuters stringer. The camp represents one of several makeshift sites that have sprung up to accommodate those displaced in Taiz province as the fighting intensified this month.
The IOM has noted that the displaced often arrive with very little, exacerbating strains on local resources and aid supplies that are already limited, according to statements carried by Reuters. An IOM official told reporters that stocks will be depleted soon if the situation continues. Nearly half the Yemeni population, around 22 million people, requires urgent humanitarian assistance amid the renewed conflict, the agency has estimated.
United Nations officials have described the violence as a crisis layered on top of Yemen’s long-running humanitarian emergency that has persisted for more than a decade, Reuters reported. The fighting risks escalating further after a period of relative pause in the civil conflict. Displacement tracking by the IOM earlier in September had shown figures climbing rapidly from initial reports of around 46,000 to the current total.
