Displaced and scared: Yemenis still in limbo after almost five years of war

Widow Samirah Nasser and her eight children tried to return to their Yemeni village but were forced by relentless air strikes to return to the relative safety of a refugee camp, reports Reuters.

Shivering through yet another camp winter, she is one of 3.6 million Yemenis – around 12% of the population – displaced during a nearly five-year war that has spawned what the United Nations says is the world’s most urgent humanitarian crisis.

“When we returned (to our village), planes were in the sky. They hit the market full of kids,” Nasser said. “I banned the children from going to school, fearing the warplanes.”

READ: 1,000 children die every day due to Saudi-led aggression

The air strikes have deterred Nasser over the past three years from attempting another return to her native region of Saada, heartland of the Iran-aligned Houthi movement that has been battling a Saudi-led military coalition since March 2015.

“The war there does not stop. Our houses are destroyed, we don’t have anywhere to stay, nothing,” said Houriya Muhammad, a 40-year-old mother-of-three also unable to return to Saada, where she used to sell pots.

Both women now live in a refugee camp in Khamir, some 2.5 hours by road from the capital Sanaa. Life is very hard in the camps, where facilities are rudimentary.

“We are dying of the cold,” said Muhammad. “My kids and I sleep wedged together with three or four blankets on us.”

READ: 35,000 people dying of cancer in Yemen

Children, with runny noses, warm themselves near open fires. Water leaks through holes in the makeshift tents.

Yemeni children affected by the Saudi-coalition war – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

More than 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which has crippled basic services and infrastructure and ravaged the economy. More than 11 million people struggle to find enough food, and 240,000 people are living in famine-like conditions, according to The World Food Programme (WFP).