‘We escaped barefoot’: Yemen families flee fresh Houthi offensive

When a terrifying bombardment erupted around their camp in Yemen this week as the country’s long-running civil war flared again, Rawya Hassan and her family fled for their lives, running barefoot and leaving their animals and belongings behind.

The family had already been forced from their village by the war years earlier. Now they were fleeing the fighting once again, joining an estimated 115,000 people who aid agencies say have been displaced by a rapid advance by the Houthi group.

“We are under terror, under the rockets, under the missiles,” Hassan said as she made bread in a makeshift clay oven at the small al-Bireen camp, where the family has sought refuge among shacks and acacia trees.

Fighting between the Iran-backed Houthis and forces aligned with the Saudi-backed government largely subsided after a 2022 truce. But violence has erupted again amid the spillover from the wider conflict between Iran and the United States.

As the Houthis seized the port city of Mocha and the southern stretch of Yemen’s Red Sea coast last week, a wave of displaced people fled into government-held areas and across the sea to Djibouti.

Among them were Hassan, 48, and her seven children, who ended up in a remote district of Taiz province, an area of steep, dry foothills between the coast and Yemen’s central highlands.

The family was originally from the village of al-Tuweir but fled fighting in the area eight years ago for a camp in the nearby al-Kadha district. Now even that place of shelter is gone, and they must start afresh.

“We escaped barefoot. We didn’t even know where our children were. We had nothing with us, no covers, no mattresses, no food, no drink, nothing,” she said, describing shells falling and warplanes or drones circling overhead.

Her older sister, Rawda, was with the children. After a long walk, they reunited the next day at al-Bireen camp, where they are now entirely dependent on aid.

Rawda, an orange scarf wrapped around her head, said the family does not know where to go next. From the camp, a dirt path leads into the hills, while a nearby road runs between the Houthi-held coastline and another frontline at the city of Taiz.

Sudden return to war pushes many to flee

Larger numbers of people fled along Yemen’s Indian Ocean coastline, traveling from the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the mouth of the Red Sea toward Aden. Many arrived at camps outside the city, where white tents stood in rows across windswept sand.

Um Mohammed said her family escaped from Mocha when the Houthis advanced last week. It was the latest blow the family had suffered after her son was killed earlier in the war.

When they reached al-Firdaws camp, the family was given only thin mattresses and old blankets for the tent where they now shelter, she said.

Small children played nearby as women hauled large buckets of water from tanks delivered by pickup truck and aid workers distributed food rations.

“They put us in the middle of the sand. We have suffered a lot,” she said, boiling water in a kettle over a small twig fire and adding that they had lost their livestock, clothes and blankets while fleeing.

The fighting in Yemen has erupted into full-scale war along several fronts, with the Houthis using drones and ballistic missiles while Saudi Arabia pounds areas held by the Iran-backed group with warplanes. There is no immediate sign the violence will ease.

The U.N. migration agency IOM said Friday that at least 112,000 people had been displaced inside Yemen over the previous two weeks, while nearly 3,000 more had fled to Djibouti, crossing the Gulf of Aden in overcrowded boats.

DAILYSABAH