Over 120,000 Yemenis flee Red Sea fighting for safety in Djibouti camps

Ibrahim Issa sits on a tarpaulin spread across sand inside a cavernous warehouse at Markazi camp in Obock, northern Djibouti, his family clustered around him. The 50-year-old fisherman from Dhubab, a coastal town in Yemen caught directly between warring forces, made the crossing of the Red Sea's Bab al-Mandab Strait by boat—a journey thousands of others have now undertaken in recent weeks. He brought his family, some of their possessions, even several goats. Most arrivals have been less fortunate, stepping onto Djibouti's shore with nothing but the clothes they wore when they fled.

What drove them out was straightforward and universal among those interviewed: the sound of planes. When aircraft approached, children screamed and shook. Issa, like every other parent in the camp, faced an impossible arithmetic—stay and endure the terror, or leave everything behind. "How could I just sit there when my kids are screaming and shaking in terror?" he asked. The choice, for him, was no choice at all.

In just the past few days, more than 3,000 refugees arrived at Markazi. The UN estimates that over 120,000 Yemenis have been displaced by the sudden escalation of fighting along the Red Sea coast. This month, the Houthis—who had already controlled most of Yemen's populated regions for years—launched a rapid advance toward the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the narrow maritime chokepoint where the southern Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden. Saudi Arabia, backing Yemen's internationally recognized government, responded with hundreds of airstrikes across the flat coastal plain. The Houthis fired back with hundreds of drones and missiles aimed at southwestern Saudi cities and infrastructure. For the families trapped between these two forces, the identity of the attacker was irrelevant. Bombs fell indiscriminately. People fled.

Qassim Abraham Abssy, a former fisherman whose identity card lists him as 100 years old, described the calculus simply: "It was the planes. The sounds of the planes, boom! That's what made us flee, for the sake of our children." He explained that the Houthis were everywhere—in mountains, on roads—so when planes came, they bombed everywhere. The distinction between combatants dissolved in the noise and dust.

Djibouti, a small former French colony across the water from Yemen, has declared itself neutral in the conflict. Yet it is one of Africa's most militarized nations, home to a massive U.S. multinational base called Camp Lemonnier since 2003, and to China's largest military presence on the Indian Ocean, recently upgraded. The camps themselves are jointly administered by Djibouti's government and the UN, with the UN refugee agency providing tents and basic infrastructure. In the blazing 37-degree Celsius heat, families live in neat rows of canvas shelters, some having arrived with small bundles of possessions—one family even managed to bring a tall metal shisha pipe—while others had nothing.

Mohammed Abdullarim, a 63-year-old former tour guide from Aden, has been at the camp since 2015, when fighting first erupted between the Houthis and the government of then-President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. He has watched the camp fill and refill for over a decade. As he spoke about the current arrivals, the weight of his country's suffering overtook him. He turned away, choking back tears, asking that the voices of the camp's residents be heard by aid organizations and the Djibouti government. "Most of the people here are in the worst condition," he said. "I'm crying for these people, for my people, for their suffering."

Yemen's civil war, which began in 2014, has killed tens of thousands and displaced millions. A UN-brokered truce in 2022 between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis held for a time but has now collapsed spectacularly, with both sides trading missiles, drones, and airstrikes once again. How long the refugees will remain in Djibouti depends entirely on whether the fighting stops. Qassim Abssy and his wife, Aisha Abdulkadir Mohammed, expressed what many in the camp feel: they will not return to Yemen while the war continues. "We have peace here," Qassim said. His wife added that they would return only if peace returned to their country. "All we need is peace," she said, "even for our children's future. They get safety first, then food, water and an education. We just fled with our clothes, and left everything behind, because there is no peace."