Yemenis fleeing Houthi offensive overwhelm aid capacity

RAS AMRAN, Yemen (JNI) — A military offensive by Iran-backed Houthi rebels has flooded government-held southern Yemen with refugees and strained the capacity of relief groups.

More than 200,000 people have fled their homes since the Houthi assault began in early September, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported on 12 October.

“We were living in terror,” Sabir Saeed, a refugee from a village on Yemen’s Red Sea coast, told Jusoor. He and his family decided to leave after Houthi militants opened fire on his car along the coast road, he said, adding that most of the village’s other residents also fled. “They do these things to make us leave and abandon our homes.”

Saeed, his wife, and their children sheltered in an unfinished house with three other families in Ras Amran, about 20 miles east of Aden. Twenty people in all live in the cramped quarters, Saeed said, with no working bathroom or kitchen facilities.

“The situation here in Ras Amran is catastrophic,” local aid worker Salma Idan told Jusoor. “The number of those in need continues to grow every day… Some organizations have helped us, but we still need more.”

In December 2025, before the latest Houthi offensive, aid groups operating in Yemen estimated that they needed two billion dollars to assist victims of the country’s civil war. Donor funding covered less than a quarter of that sum, according to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.