Yemenis flee across Red Sea as Houthis and Saudi-backed forces escalate war

ByFrank Gardner Security correspondent, Reporting fromMarkazi camp, Obock, Djibouti.

Key points

• In just the last few days more than 3, 000 refugees have arrived here from Yemen, plenty of entire families.
• Back in Markazi camp, one of those I spoke to is Qassim Abraham Abssy.
• Yemen has been wracked by a horrific civil war that has killed tens of thousands of individuals and displaced millions since 2014.
• Saudi Arabia problems first air raid alerts for Riyadh since Houthis escalated attacks.
• Lightning Houthi advance in Yemen may bring dangerous new dimension to Iran war.

Ibrahim Issa, 50, is from the Yemeni coastal town of Dhubab, right on the front lines of the war between Yemen's Houthis and the Saudi-backed pro-government forces fighting them.

Today he sits, surrounded by his family, on a tarpaulin spread over a sandy floor inside a vast open-sided warehouse at Markazi camp in Obock, northern Djibouti, packed with Yemeni families who have fled by boat throughout the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait.

After their sea crossing, Yemeni refugees have created their way by truck and on foot to this camp, jointly administered by the administration and the UN.

"How could I just sit there when my kids are screaming and shaking in terror?" notes Ibrahim Issa. "When the sound of the planes start, and the kids hear the planes, they commence shouting and screaming. As parents it is our responsibility, what can you do when you see this? That is why we fled, to save them."

As a fisherman, Ibrahim Issa already owned a boat sizeable enough to bring out his family from Yemen.

He even brought a number of of the family's goats which I can now see nibbling at scraps nearby, foraging amidst the discarded canisters of cooking gas and empty plastic bottles. Some families have been able to bring small bundles of possessions with them from Yemen – one family has even brought a "jeraak", a tall metal shisha pipe – but others have arrived, exhausted, in just the clothes they left in.

In just the last few days more than 3, 000 refugees have arrived here from Yemen, plenty of entire families. The UN estimates that in all, more than 120, 000 Yemenis have been displaced by the sudden surge in fighting along Yemen's Red Sea coast.

This month, the country's Houthis. This person had already seized most of the populated parts of Yemen years ago, created a lightning dash down the coast towards Bab al-Mandab, the narrow, maritime chokepoint where the southern Red Sea flows into the Gulf of Aden and the wider Indian Ocean.

Saudi Arabia, which backs the internationally recognised UN-recognised administration of Yemen, has responded with hundreds of air strikes along the flat, coastal plain where the Houthis are now digging in. The Houthis have additionally rolled out hundreds of drones and missiles at cities and infrastructure in south-western Saudi Arabia.

"We don't care which side it is that's attacking, " is the message I obtained loud and clear in Arabic from everyone here I spoke to. "It's the bombs falling all around us that have caused us to flee."

Djibouti, a tiny former French colony that sits just throughout the water from Yemen, has produced it clear it has no intention of involving itself in the war between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed Yemeni administration.

And yet Djibouti is one of the most militarised nations in Africa. Since 2003, the US has run a massive multinational base here, Camp Lemonnier, once home to the French Foreign Legion. China too has a major base here, its largest military presence on the Indian Ocean and lately upgraded.

Back in Markazi camp, one of those I spoke to is Qassim Abraham Abssy. Once additionally a fisherman, his identity card indicates him to be 100 years old. "What led us to come here?" he asks rhetorically.

"It was the planes. The sounds of the planes, boom! That's what created us flee, for the sake of our children. It burns ours hearts. We don't know which side they are from. Since the Houthis are everywhere, in the mountains, in the roads, they are bombing everywhere. A plane comes, bombs everywhere."

Outside in the blazing 37C heat, close to the neat lines of tents supplied by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, I met Mohammed Abdullarim from Aden, a 63-year-old former tour guide old enough to have been born when Aden was still a British protectorate.

Unlike the new arrivals, Mohammed has been here since 2015. He fled to Djibouti shortly after the fighting first flared up between the Houthis and the administration of the now-ousted President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

As we were talking, the sadness of what is happening to his country overwhelmed him and he turned his head away, choking back tears, he has been at the camp ever since but suddenly.

"Most of the individuals here are in the worst condition, inside the tents here. I am particularly touched, I'm crying for these residents, for my individuals, for their suffering. I want our voices to be heard by the NGOs and the Djibouti administration. And I'm thankful to them for accepting us."

How long will they have to stay here? That depends, of course, on the fighting. Yemen has been wracked by a horrific civil war that has killed tens of thousands of individuals and displaced millions since 2014.

Meanwhile, a shaky, UN-brokered 2022 truce between the Saudis and the Houthis has broken down spectacularly in recent months, with the two sides trading missiles, drones and air strikes.

Yemen's war may be a remote one to most individuals but the effect of choking off Saudi Arabia's oil exports through the Bab al-Mandab Strait are well publicised. But as ever, it is often the human cost that goes unnoticed.

Sitting beside his wife on their tarpaulin, against the backdrop of the cacophony all around them, Qassim Abssy the fisherman is wary of leaving the safety of Djibouti: "If the war continues then we're not going back because we have peace here."

His wife, Aisha Abdulkadir Mohammed, agrees. We are willing to go back in peace if peace returns to our country, and we are praying to God that peace does return. All we need is peace, even for our children's future, they obtain safety first, then food, water and an education.

"As you see we just fled with our clothes, and left everything behind, because there is no peace."

For now, yemenis flee across Red Sea as Houthis and Saudi remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.