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

Ibrahim Issa, 50, é da cidade costeira yemenita de Dhubab, bem na linha de frente da guerra entre os houthis do Iêmen e as forças pró-governo apoiadas pela Arábia Saudita que lutam contra eles.

Arábia Saudita emite primeiro alerta de ataque aéreo para Riyadh desde que os houthis intensificaram os ataques. Publicado há 2 dias.

Houthi dizem que atacaram a capital saudita com mísseis balísticos. Publicado há 1 dia.

Avanço relâmpago dos Houthi no Iêmen pode trazer nova dimensão perigosa à guerra do Irã.

Legenda da figura, Assista: Dentro de um acampamento para refugiados yemenitas em Djibouti.

Hoje ele senta, cercado por sua família, sobre uma lona estendida sobre um piso arenoso dentro de um vasto armazém aberto no acampamento Markazi, em Obock, norte de Djibouti, repleto de famílias yemenitas que fugiram de barco atravessando o estreito e estreito Estreito de Bab al-Mandab.

Após a travessia marítima, refugiados yemenitas chegaram ao acampamento de carro e a pé, que é administrado em conjunto pelo governo e pela ONU.

Como eu poderia ficar sentado aí enquanto meus filhos gritam e tremem de terror?" diz Ibrahim Issa. "Quando o som dos aviões começa, e as crianças ouvem os aviões, elas começam a gritar e a chorar.

Como pais, é nossa responsabilidade, o que você pode fazer quando vê isso? Foi por isso que fugimos, para salvá-los.

Fonte da imagem, Ed Habershon/ BBCLegenda da imagem, Ibrahim Issa escapou em seu barco de pesca com a família e várias cabras.

Como pescador, Ibrahim Issa já possuía um barco grande o suficiente para levar sua família do Yemen.

Ele até trouxe várias cabras da família, que agora vejo roendo restos próximos, forrageando entre os canisters descartados de gás de cozinha e garrafas plásticas vazias.

Algumas famílias conseguiram levar pequenos pacotes de pertences com elas do Iêmen – uma família trouxe até um "jeraak", um alto cachimbo de metal para shisha – mas outras chegaram, exaustas, apenas com as roupas que deixaram para trás.

Apenas nos últimos poucos dias, mais de 3. 000 refugiados chegaram aqui do Iêmen, muitas famílias inteiras. A ONU estima que, no total, mais de 120. 000 iemenitas foram deslocados pela súbita onda de combates ao longo da costa do Mar Vermelho do Iêmen.

This month, the country's Houthis, who had already seized most of the populated parts of Yemen years ago, made 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 government of Yemen, has responded with hundreds of air strikes along the flat, coastal plain where the Houthis are now digging in.

The Houthis have also launched 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 got 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 across the water from Yemen, has made it clear it has no intention of involving itself in the war between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government.

And yet Djibouti is one of the most militarised nations in Africa. Since 2003, the US has run a huge 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 recently upgraded.

Back in Markazi camp, one of those I spoke to is Qassim Abraham Abssy. Once also a fisherman, his identity card shows 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 made us flee, for the sake of our children. It burns ours hearts. We don't know which side they are from.

They are bombing everywhere, because the Houthis are everywhere, in the mountains, in the roads. A plane comes, bombs everywhere.

Image source, Ed Habershon/ BBCImage caption, More than 120,000 Yemenis are estimated to have been displaced by the sudden surge in fighting.

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 soon after the fighting first flared up between the Houthis and the government of the now-ousted President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi.

He has been at the camp ever since but suddenly, as we were talking, 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, inside the tents here. I am very touched, 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 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 people and displaced millions since 2014.

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.

Image source, Frank Gardner/ BBCImage caption, "We are willing to go back in peace if peace returns to our country," says Aisha Abdulkadir Mohammed.

Yemen's war may be a remote one to most people 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.

Sentado ao lado de sua esposa em seu toldo, em meio à cacofonia ao seu redor, Qassim Abssy, o pescador, fica cauteloso em deixar a segurança de Djibouti: 'Se a guerra continuar, nós não voltaremos porque aqui temos paz.

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 get safety first, then food, water and an education.

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

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