The conflict in Yemen intensified on Sunday, as government forces launched attacks against Iran-backed Houthi group along the Red Sea.
The Yemeni government vowed to send more forces to the Red Sea coast after conceding a “painful” defeat last week when Houthis captured the port city of Mokha and an island on the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a crucial shipping alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.
The United Nations estimated that more than 80,000 people have been displaced by the fighting since the start of September.
One woman said a mortar shell fell nearby as she fled in the middle of the night from the town of Khawkha in the Houthi-held Hodeidah province along the Red Sea, shortly before it was captured by the militants.
“I saw with my own eyes cars and buses burning, and bodies of children and women were lying on the road in a horrific scene,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for her and her family’s safety.
The Saudi civil defense overnight said a Houthi projectile fell in a different area near the border with Yemen along the Red Sea, injuring two people and damaging a mosque and several other buildings.
The National Resistance, a government-allied force that had controlled coastal areas, said more than 500 government fighters were killed on the west coast over the past four weeks — its first comprehensive toll. It said about 1,500 others had been wounded in the fighting since August 9.
It said more than 1,000 Houthis had been killed in the Hodeidah and Taiz provinces.
Sultan al-Aradah, a member of the ruling Presidential Leadership Council, described the collapse of government forces in the port city of Mokha and elsewhere on Yemen’s west coast as “painful and regrettable.”
Al-Aradah said in the televised interview aired late Saturday that forces “are currently regrouping and will return to the battle in one form or another.”
On Sunday, the Yemeni military said it launched airstrikes on Houthi positions in Mokha and the coastal town of Dhubab, and elsewhere in Taiz province.
The Houthis also reported strikes by the government forces in the province, as well as artillery shelling in the province of Saada, the Houthi stronghold on Yemen's northern borders.
The Houthis' advance puts them just 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the US military base in Djibouti, on the other side of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. It's the main US base in Africa and one of several foreign military bases in Djibouti, including those of China, France and Japan.
The small Horn of Africa nation is already seeing the arrival of displaced Yemenis making the perilous water crossing. More than 2,000 Yemenis have reached Djibouti, the International Organization for Migration said Sunday.
Djibouti's Economy and Finance Minister Ilyas M. Dawaleh, said on X that the country's navy, coast guard and other specialized agencies were conducting rescue operations and providing emergency assistance.
Yemenis displaced by fighting worry about their survival
The UN migration agency said Sunday that more than 82,000 people in Yemen have been displaced since the beginning of September.
“The displaced people are in a very bad condition,” said Ahmad al-Masawi, the director of the Al Salam camp in the southern port city of Aden, who appealed to international organizations for assistance. “They left their homes quickly without any clothing or anything. They are crammed in camps, houses and even on roads."
Hussein Haydara sat outside a shelter at the camp in a white undershirt, as his children waited to be assigned to a tent. He worried about how far the shelter is from schools, hospitals and markets, and wondered how they will survive the next weeks or months.
Haydara had fled his home in Hodeidah once before, when the Houthis took it over in 2015. But this time feels more precarious.
“With the first displacement, we had time to plan things but this time we were forced to escape all of a sudden. One could hardly take their children and the lightest stuff possible,” he said.
