DEBBIE ELLIOTT, HOST:
Aid groups say half of Yemen's population is in need of humanitarian assistance and that 18 million people are facing acute food insecurity after years of conflict. But this month, things got worse. The Iran-backed Houthi rebels, already in control of Yemen's capital, managed to dislodge Saudi-backed forces from Western Yemen. This reignited hostilities and shattered a fragile truce. NPR's international correspondent Aya Batrawy is following the story from Dubai and reports on the deepening crisis unfolding in Western Yemen.
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: The U.N. World Food Programme says that in just a matter of days this month, 125,000 people were displaced in Yemen. And it says that number will likely rise as frontline fighting moves. Alison Bottomley is with the aid group the Norwegian Refugee Council in Yemen.
ALISON BOTTOMLEY: It's a very dynamic, moving, massive scale of displacement.
BATRAWY: Bottomley says the situation is dire, with roads difficult to navigate and not enough aid to reach everyone.
BOTTOMLEY: Most of the camps are already full, so they're hoping to find space, or they move on, or they try to find someone in the local villages that will help them. But people are also sleeping under trees. Like, they're just waiting on the side of the road.
BATRAWY: Most of the people are displaced in Taiz. That's where some of the fiercest clashes are happening. It's a province along Bab el-Mandeb. That's the Red Sea shipping corridor where Iran-backed Houthis have attacked Saudi oil tankers. Aid groups say they're rushing to set up new displacement camps with water, food and mattresses in parts of the governorate of Taiz. Bottomley shared sound with NPR from one of those new displacement camps there.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHILD CRYING)
BATRAWY: The Houthis captured parts of Taiz, including the port city of Mokha, so swiftly that Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces left their vehicles behind. And families didn't have time to grab their clothes as they fled shelling and gunfire. But not everyone can leave.
SARA AHMED: There are pregnant women who need urgent care. There are women who need cesarean sections. There are children who need treatment and patients with medical conditions who simply cannot wait.
BATRAWY: Sara Ahmed is a health promotion supervisor with the aid group Doctors Without Borders in Mokha's general hospital. She says most other health facilities in the city are no longer functioning.
AHMED: The team that remains that the hospital is still there, working under very difficult circumstances and doing everything they can to keep these services going. The situation remains very uncertain and extremely stressful for everyone.
BATRAWY: The World Health Organization says it can no longer transfer patients from Mokha to the government stronghold of Aden in the south and that the city of Taiz, quote, "must plan for isolation." Many people can't leave Taiz. The roads to Aden in the south are under missile fire, says Faisal al-Asali, who leads the human rights group the Protection of Freedoms of Taiz and is opposed to Houthi rule.
FAISAL AL-ASALI: (Speaking Arabic).
BATRAWY: And he says there are heavy strikes on Mokha ever since the Houthis took the city. The Saudi air force and the Yemeni government's army have been launching airstrikes on Mokha and elsewhere. There's another problem facing Yemen - a lack of funding. The U.N. says only 20% of its funding needs for Yemen have been met this year. Here's Bottomley of the Norwegian Refugee Council again.
BOTTOMLEY: We know how to respond to the needs. We're able to do it. But we really lack the money, the funding that we need to do it at the scale that's required now. And this is the sort of displacement - it doesn't resolve itself.
BATRAWY: Similarly, Mercy Corps, now known as Prosper Global, says more funding is urgently needed. Here's regional programs director Laila Al Amine.
LAILA AL AMINE: Of course, as you know, these families are arriving in host communities that are already very affected by the conflict that has been going on in Yemen for years. So we need, of course, additional support for both the displaced and for the host communities.
BATRAWY: But unable to wait, the U.N. Refugee Council says more than 2,400 people have fled Yemen this past week alone, taking boats to Djibouti in the Horn of Africa.
Aya Batrawy, NPR News, Dubai. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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