Yemeni civilians caught amid clashes

CAIRO — A United Nations humanitarian agency warned Tuesday that thousands of Yemeni civilians caught in fierce clashes between warring factions are trapped in an embattled northern district, an area that has become a flash point in the country’s civil war.

The number of displaced in the Kushar district in the impoverished Hajjah governorate has doubled over the past six months, with over 5,300 families fleeing from the district and its surrounding area in the past weeks, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Kushar, a mountainous district only 31 miles from the border with Saudi Arabia, has been isolated from the outside world — roads and all communication lines are cut and “thousands of civilians are reportedly trapped between conflicting parties,” the U.N. and local residents said.

Over the past several days, airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition, which is fighting Iran-backed Houthi rebels on behalf of Yemen’s internationally recognized government, killed 22 people, including women and 14 children in the area.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels imposed tight control over Kushar after powerful local tribesmen took up arms against them. The Houthis subsequently shelled the district — home to 100,000 people — and killed and wounded scores of civilians. Thousands were displaced. As the Houthi siege strangled the area, the Saudi-led coalition airdropped food and medicine to the tribes.

Yemen’s civil war has killed over 60,000 people and displaced 3 million, pushing the already impoverished nation to the brink of famine.

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