People fleeing Iran-backed rebels’ advance in Yemen describe a ‘hysterical panic’

It was a heart-pounding escape. As Houthi rebels backed by Iran swept south along Yemen’s Red Sea coast this week, some residents had little time to flee.

“We set out in hysterical panic on a motorcycle, not knowing where we were heading,” Alaa Ali Salem said. “The roads suddenly became extremely congested, and while I was driving, the motorcycle overturned. My wife, my children and I were all injured.”

His family and thousands of others, in numbers leaping by the day, are now displaced as the Arab world’s poorest country faces a potential return to a devastating civil war.

The Associated Press on Saturday visited some of the newly displaced in Aden, a city under the control of Yemen’s internationally recognized government, as residents opened homes to them.

Children sprawled in crowded rooms of thin mattresses that were scattered with the few belongings grabbed in haste. A young girl clutched a smartphone. Crutches were propped against a wall. Worn-looking elders napped. A fan stirred the air on a day where temperatures reached into the 90s Fahrenheit.

Those fleeing have seen the front line of what the United Nations warns could be a return to a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Houthis’ advance…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business