Fighting uproots 112,000 in Yemen, thousands flee to Djibouti: UN

Renewed fighting in Yemen has displaced more than 112,000 people and pushed nearly 3,000 others to flee across the Red Sea to Djibouti, the United Nations said on Friday.

Iran-backed Houthis last week seized control of Yemen's Red Sea coastline, tightening their grip on the strategic Bab al-Mandab strait, a vital shipping gateway linking Europe and Asia via the Suez Canal.

But the latest fighting between the Houthis and forces loyal to the Aden-based government has also sparked a fresh humanitarian crisis, with civilians uprooted inside Yemen and others risking dangerous sea crossings to flee the violence.

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has recorded more than 112,000 internally displaced people since the outbreak of fighting, the UN agency's leader in Yemen, Abdusattor Esoev, told reporters.

Most have been displaced over the last two weeks, mainly along the west coast and in the provinces of Taiz and Lahj, he told them from Aden.

Across the Red Sea, nearly 3,000 people have arrived in Djibouti in less than a week after making the perilous crossing from Yemen, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR).

The influx is adding pressure to a country of about one million people that already hosts around 36,000 refugees, most of them from Somalia and Ethiopia, UNHCR representative Sandrine Desamours said.

She added that "while the number may sound small", it must be seen in proportion to the population.

After years of relative calm, Yemen was drawn back into conflict in July amid the wider regional fallout from the US-Israeli war on Iran.

A previous war between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, from 2014 to 2022, killing hundreds of thousands of people and plunging the Arab world's poorest country into one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.