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

Ibrahim Issa, 50, a resident of the Yemeni coastal town of Dhubab near the front lines of the conflict between the Houthis and Saudi‑backed government forces, now sits with his family on a tarpaulin inside a large open‑sided warehouse at Markazi camp in Obock, Djibouti. The camp, jointly managed by the Djibouti authorities and the United Nations, hosts Yemeni families who have crossed the Bab al‑Mandab strait by boat and then continued by truck and on foot. “How could I just be there while my kids are screaming and shaking in terror?” Issa says. “When the sound of the planes starts, and the children hear the planes, they begin shouting and screaming. As parents it is our responsibility, what can you do when you see this? That is why we fled, to protect them.” As a fisherman, Issa already owned a vessel large enough to evacuate his household from Yemen. He also brought several of the family’s goats, which now nibble at scraps near discarded cooking‑gas canisters and empty plastic bottles. Some families have managed to carry small bundles of possessions—one household even brought a “jeraak,” a tall metal shisha pipe—while others arrived with nothing but the clothes they wore. In just the past few days, more than 3,000 refugees have arrived at the camp, many of them entire families. The United Nations estimates that, in total, more than 120,000 Yemenis have been displaced by the recent surge of fighting along the Red Sea coast. This month the Houthis, who had already seized most of Yemen’s populated areas years ago, launched a rapid advance down the coastline toward Bab al‑Mandab, the narrow maritime chokepoint where the southern Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden and the wider Indian Ocean. Saudi Arabia, which backs the internationally recognised UN‑recognised Yemeni government, responded with hundreds of airstrikes on the flat coastal plain where the Houthis are now entrenched. The Houthis have also fired hundreds of drones and missiles at cities and infrastructure in southwestern Saudi Arabia. “We don’t care which side it is that’s attacking,” is the sentiment expressed in Arabic by everyone interviewed at the camp. “It’s the bombs falling all around us that have forced us to flee.” Djibouti, a tiny former French colony situated just across the water from Yemen, has declared it will not involve itself in the war between the Houthis and the Saudi‑backed Yemeni government. Nevertheless, Djibouti ranks among the most militarised nations in Africa. Since 2003 the United States has operated a large multinational base here, Camp Lemonnier, formerly home to the French Foreign Legion. China also maintains a significant base, its largest overseas facility, which has been recently upgraded. Back at Markazi camp, one interviewee is Qassim Abraham Abssy, a former fisherman whose identity papers list him as 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 made us flee, for the sake of our children. It burns our hearts. We don’t know which side they are from. They are bombing everywhere, because the Houthis are everywhere, in the mountains, on the roads. A level comes, bombs everywhere.” Outside in the blazing 37 °C heat, beside the neat rows of tents supplied by the UN refugee agency UNHCR, I met Mohammed Abdullarim from Aden, a 63‑year‑old former tour guide who could have been born when Aden was still a British protectorate. Unlike the newest arrivals, Mohammed has been at the camp since 2015, having fled to Djibouti shortly after the first flare‑up of fighting between the Houthis and the government of the now‑ousted President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. He has remained at the camp ever since, but during our conversation the sadness of what is happening to his country overwhelmed him, and he turned his head away, choking back tears. “Most of the people here are in the worst condition, in these tents. I am deeply moved, I’m crying for these people, for my people, for their suffering. I want our voices to be heard by the NGOs and the Djibouti government. And I’m thankful to them for accepting us.” How long they will have to stay depends on the fighting. Yemen has endured a devastating civil war since 2014 that has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. A shaky, UN‑brokered truce between the Saudis and the Houthis in 2022 has collapsed dramatically in recent months, with the two sides exchanging missiles, drones and airstrikes. Although Yemen’s war may seem distant to many, the impact of choking off Saudi Arabia’s oil exports through the Bab al‑Mandab strait is widely reported. Yet, as always, the human cost often goes unnoticed. Sitting beside his wife on their tarpaulin amid the surrounding noise, Qassim Abssy, the fisherman, expressed wariness about leaving the safety of Djibouti: “If the war continues past now, we’re not going back because we have peace here.” His wife, Aisha Abdulkadir Mohammed, agrees. “We are willing to go back if peace returns to our country, and we are praying to God that peace does return. All we ask is peace, even for our children’s future—they need safety first, then food, water and an education.” “As you see, we simply fled with our clothes and left everything behind, because [in Yemen] there is no peace.”