AL-BIREEN CAMP, Yemen, Sept 18 (Reuters) – When a terrifying bombardment erupted around their camp in Yemen this week as a long-paused civil war reignited, Rawya Hassan and her family fled for their lives, barefoot and leaving their animals and other belongings behind.
The family had already been forced from their village by war years earlier and now had to escape the fighting again, joining 115,000 people who aid agencies say are on the move after a rapid advance by the Houthi group.
“We are under terror, under the rockets, under the missiles,” she said, making bread in a makeshift clay oven among the shacks and acacia trees of the small al-Bireen camp, where the family has now sought shelter.
The conflict between the Iran-backed Houthis and forces aligned with the Saudi-backed government mostly stopped after a 2022 truce, but fighting has broken out again in a spillover from the wider war 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 areas held by the government and across the sea to Djibouti.
Among them were Hassan, 48, and her family of seven children, in a remote district of Taiz province, an area of steep, dry foothills between the coast and Yemen’s central highlands.
The family were originally from the village of al-Tuweir, but fled fighting in the area eight years ago for a camp in al-Kadha district nearby. Now even that place of shelter has 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 and after a long walk they reunited the next day at al-Bireen camp where they are entirely dependent on aid.
Rawda, an orange scarf wrapped round her head, said the family does not now know where to go. From the camp, a dirt path leads up into the hills, and a road runs nearby between the Houthi-held coastline and another frontline at the city of Taiz.
SUDDEN RETURN TO WAR HAS PUSHED MANY TO FLEE
Larger numbers of people fled along the Indian Ocean coastline from the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the mouth of the Red Sea towards Aden, arriving at camps pitched before the city in windswept sand with white tents standing in rows.
Um Mohammed said her family had 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 were given only thin mattresses and old blankets for the tent where they now shelter, she said.
Small children played nearby and women hauled large buckets of water from tanks brought by pick-up truck as 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, adding that they had lost their livestock, clothes and blankets as they left.
The fighting in Yemen has exploded back into full-blown war along several fronts, with the Houthis using drones and ballistic missiles and Saudi Arabia pounding districts held by the Iran-backed group with warplanes. There is no sign the violence will let up soon.
The UN migration agency IOM said on Friday that at least 112,000 people had been displaced inside Yemen over the last two weeks and that nearly 3,000 more had fled to Djibouti, crossing the Gulf of Aden in overcrowded boats.
(Reporting by Reuters in YemenWriting by Angus McDowallEditing by Peter Graff)
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