They fled across the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait to escape the thunder of war. Now, among thousands of fellow Yemenis sheltering at Markazi camp in Obock, northern Djibouti, they try to piece a fragile normalcy together on tarpaulins spread over sand beneath an open-sided warehouse.
Ibrahim Issa, a 50-year-old fisherman from Dhubab on Yemen’s Red Sea coast, sits with his family under the shade. He brought the boat that carried them out of the fighting and even managed to load a few goats and small keepsakes. “When the planes come, the children scream and shake,” he says. “We couldn’t stay and listen to that. We left to save them.” For many who reached Obock in recent days, that fear was the decisive force. The UN says more than 120,000 people have been displaced by a recent surge in fighting along Yemen’s coast; in just a few days Markazi received over 3,000 new arrivals.
Some families arrived with nearly nothing—only the clothes on their backs—while others carried modest bundles: a metal shisha pipe, a cooking pot, or a few treasured belongings. Goats graze among discarded plastic and empty cooking-gas canisters. Relief agencies and the Djiboutian government have set up rows of UNHCR tents nearby, but the camp remains crowded and exposed to the desert heat.
The exodus follows a rapid Houthi advance down Yemen’s coast toward the strategic Bab al-Mandab chokepoint, which links the southern Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Saudi Arabia, supporting Yemen’s internationally recognised government, has responded with intense air strikes along the flat coastal plain as the Houthis entrench. The conflict has also spilled across the border into south-western Saudi Arabia, with Houthi-launched drones and missiles striking cities and infrastructure.
“At the camp everyone I spoke to said the same thing: we don’t care which side is attacking,” a journalist reported. “It’s the bombs falling around us that forced us to flee.” That sentiment is echoed by Qassim Abraham Abssy, an elderly fisherman whose identity card lists him as 100 years old. “It was the planes—boom!—that made us leave,” he says. “We don’t know whose planes they are. They bomb everywhere.”
Djibouti, a small former French colony directly across from Yemen, has been careful to stay out of the fighting. Yet it hosts heavy foreign military footprints: the US operates Camp Lemonnier, and China maintains its largest Indian Ocean base there. Even so, the government has allowed the UN and humanitarian agencies to run Markazi and similar reception sites for those escaping the coastal fighting.
Not everyone at Markazi is newly arrived. Mohammed Abdullarim, 63, a former Aden tour guide, has lived at the camp since 2015, when earlier rounds of the war drove him from Yemen. As he watches families arrive today, his composure breaks; he turns away to hide his tears. “Most people here are in the worst condition,” he says. “I’m crying for my people, for their suffering. I want our voices heard by the NGOs and the Djibouti government. I’m thankful they accepted us.”
How long they will remain in Djibouti hinges on the course of the fighting. Yemen has been torn by war since 2014, with hundreds of thousands killed or displaced by violence, disease and famine. A fragile truce brokered in 2022 unraveled this year, and the renewed exchanges of air strikes and missile attacks have deepened the humanitarian crisis. The conflict’s strategic implications—threats to shipping through vital sea lanes and regional tensions—have drawn international attention, but the daily toll on civilians is less visible.
For many in Markazi, returning home is contingent on peace. “If the war continues, we will not go back because there is peace here,” says Qassim. His wife, Aisha Abdulkadir Mohammed, echoes that plea: “We would return if peace comes. All we want is peace—for our children’s safety, for food, water and schooling. We left with only our clothes because there is no peace back home.”
In the meantime, life at the camp is a study in endurance. Parents strive to soothe frightened children; elders recall lives disrupted; small acts—tending a goat, sharing a cup of tea, praying—anchor people amid uncertainty. Aid agencies work to provide tents, water, and medical help, but resources are stretched and the future remains precarious. For these families, the narrow sea crossing offered an escape from immediate danger, but not an escape from loss or the anxieties of what comes next. They wait, hoping for a peace that would let them return and rebuild the homes and lives they left behind.
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