More than 200,000 people displaced as renewed fighting grips Yemen, UN agency says

More than 200,000 people have been displaced across Yemen as fighting between Houthi rebels and Saudi-backed government forces has intensified in recent weeks, the United Nations's migration agency says.

Speed of crisis 'alarming,' says International Organization for Migration

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More than 200,000 people have been displaced across Yemen as fighting between Houthi rebels and Saudi-backed government forces has intensified in recent weeks, the United Nations's migration agency says.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said on Wednesday that the speed of the displacement was "alarming," with at least 201,217 people now forced out of their homes — up from 76,000 in mid-September.

Yemen's southwestern Ta'iz governorate, on the Red Sea coast, accounted for more than half of all those displaced throughout the country of some 43 million people.

"People are running for their lives and finding nowhere safe to go," IOM director general Amy Pope said in a statement.

A years-long civil war reignited in July when Yemen's internationally recognized government said it bombed the airport in the capital, Sanaa, which is under the control of the Iran-aligned Houthis, to prevent an Iranian plane carrying Houthi officials from landing.

The Houthis blamed Saudi Arabia, which backs the Yemeni government, for the attack and launched a series of strikes on Saudi targets.

The fighting escalated dramatically last month when the Houthis seized the country's entire Red Sea coast from government forces, which this week launched a counter-offensive with the support of a Saudi-led coalition, aiming to keep the Bab el-Mandeb strait open to shipping. 

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The Saudi Foreign Ministry has stressed the need to ensure freedom of navigation in the strait, a critical waterway off Yemen's southwestern coast that leads to the Red Sea. The Houthis had declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia in July.

"Riyadh apparently believes that diplomacy has failed and previous efforts to appease the Houthis have merely caused their ambitions to expand," Annelle Sheline, a non-resident senior fellow at Arab Center Washington DC, a think-tank, wrote this week.

"The Yemeni population, many of whom are already on the edge of survival, are paying the price."

Displaced Yemeni children from Al-Kadha, west of Taiz, sit in the Al-Akdaf camp in Taiz on Sept. 26. (Abdulnasser Alseddik/The Associated Press)

Food insecurity rising

The IOM said displaced Yemenis have sought shelter in makeshift camps, or with relatives and neighbours, in 10 governorates across the country so far.

More than 3,700 others have reached nearby Djibouti by sea. "They arrive exhausted, in overcrowded boats, with little food or water. Families are leaving with almost nothing. Many flee at night, carrying what they can. Most are women and children," the agency said.

Last week, the World Food Programme (WFP) also warned that food insecurity was "accelerating rapidly" in Yemen amid the escalating violence.

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Nearly three out of four Yemeni families in areas where the WFP is able to operate "are unable to meet their basic food needs today," WFP official Matthew Hollingworth told reporters on Friday. "That's a record number for this year in just a few weeks."

Hollingworth also said many Yemenis have been forced to walk for "days without any water or food" to seek safety.

"Some are surviving largely on bread that they brought with them and a simple soup made from anything they can find — leaves, grass, et cetera."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours is a senior writer at CBC based in Montreal. You can reach her at jillian.kestler-d.amours@cbc.ca.