IOM says at least 46,000 people have fled fighting in southwestern Yemen
Yemen Herald News 
TAIZ, Yemen — At least 46,000 people have fled their homes in southwestern Yemen since fighting escalated last week, the International Organization for Migration said Friday.
The UN migration agency said the total was rising “by the hour.”
The figure covers the West Coast governorates and Taiz as of Thursday, according to the agency.
It rests on IOM’s own Displacement Tracking Matrix. No independent body has published a separate count, and Yemen Herald could not verify the total.
Amy Pope, the agency’s director general, said families were losing what little they had left.
“Families are being forced to flee for the second or third time since the start of this conflict, with almost nothing left,” Pope said in a statement.
“As fighting spreads, reaching people with lifesaving assistance is becoming harder,” she said.
Much of the movement followed the fall of Mocha.
Houthi forces took the Red Sea port city from the internationally recognized government this week. IOM said large numbers of people were seen leaving overnight, carrying their belongings.
The agency said entire villages had been emptied in three Taiz districts — Maqbanah, Jabal Habashi and Al Ma’afer — as the fighting moved closer to populated areas.
The road linking Mocha to Taiz, a supply route, has been cut off, IOM said. It said host communities in the region were under increasing pressure.
New arrivals have been reported in Lahj and Aden. Others are moving north toward Ibb.
IOM suspended all operational movements on Friday, citing what it called a deteriorating security environment.
The agency said its Displacement Tracking Matrix team was compiling updated figures, and that widespread telecommunications disruptions had made contact with affected areas difficult.
Emergency stocks are already depleted after flood relief work last month, IOM said. It listed shelter, food, water, household items, health care and protection support as the most urgent needs.
The agency called on all parties to guarantee safe and sustained humanitarian access, to protect aid workers, premises and assets, and to restore communication and transport routes.
Other UN bodies reported casualties over the same period.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Thursday that at least 14 civilians, two of them children, had been killed or wounded since the start of September.
The World Health Organization recorded 67 deaths and 288 injuries between Aug. 6 and Aug. 24 across seven governorates.
Those were Marib and Hadramout in the east, Hodeidah in the west, Taiz in the southwest, and Shabwa, al-Dhalea and Lahj in the south, according to WHO.
WHO said only 60 percent of health facilities in Yemen are fully operational.
Hospitals in Marib, Hadramout and Taiz are taking in trauma patients, putting pressure on emergency, surgical and intensive care units, the agency said.
At Marib General Hospital, maternity and obstetrics services have been suspended to free resources for treating the wounded, according to WHO. It said the number of deaths had exceeded the morgue’s capacity.
Separately, the United Nations said Houthi fighters had seized a humanitarian compound and its assets in Mocha.
Farhan Haq, the UN deputy spokesperson, told reporters the compound housed staff of UN agencies serving communities in the area.
All UN personnel had left before the seizure and were “safe and accounted for,” Haq said.
He said humanitarian personnel, premises and assets “must be respected and protected at all times.”
The displacement follows a week of Houthi advances along Yemen’s Red Sea coast.
Government forces withdrew on Friday from an island base in the Bab al-Mandab Strait, leaving the Houthis in control of the Yemeni side of the waterway.
The island, Mayyun, also known as Perim, covers about 13 square kilometers and divides the strait into two shipping channels between Yemen and the Horn of Africa.
Mocha lies roughly 75 kilometers north of it.
The Houthis and the Yemeni government, backed by a Saudi-led coalition, have been fighting since 2014.
Yemen returned to war in July after years of relative calm, drawn into the regional conflict that began in late February.
Houthi forces attacked sites in southern Saudi Arabia on Sept. 8. Saudi authorities said fires broke out at energy facilities and 73 people were wounded. The Houthis said the attacks answered Saudi military operations in Yemen.
Hans Grundberg, the UN special envoy for Yemen, told the Security Council on Thursday that the war had entered what he called a dangerous phase.
Farea Al-Muslimi, a Yemen researcher at Chatham House in London, told Al Jazeera the escalation would produce two further crises: more internal displacement and higher prices for goods.
“Yemen was already going through one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world,” Al-Muslimi said.
He said conditions worsened after Houthi authorities restricted aid organizations in northern Yemen, and that continued fighting through a fragile truce had eroded what remained of the economy.
Al-Muslimi said more than 10,000 families had been displaced in the past week.
OCHA’s humanitarian plan for this year, published in March, put the number of Yemenis needing assistance at more than 22 million.
The plan recorded 18.3 million people facing acute food insecurity and more than 2.2 million children under five acutely malnourished, 516,157 of them severely.
It counted 5.2 million people displaced before the current fighting, and sought $2.16 billion to reach 12 million people.
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