| New York Times | - |
ADEN, Yemen
- Rooftop snipers have emptied the streets of this dusty seaside city
and swelled its hospitals and morgues. Weeks of fighting between armed
groups have left nearly 200 people dead and the city starved of water,
fuel and electricity ...
ADEN, Yemen — Rooftop snipers have emptied the streets of this dusty seaside city and swelled its hospitals and morgues.
Weeks
of fighting between armed groups have left nearly 200 people dead and
the city starved of water, fuel and electricity. Hospitals struggle to
obtain anesthetic and dressings. Barefoot, nervous teenagers with matted
hair and guns mind checkpoints on the treacherous roads. Gun battles
sweep across the city while residents lie low and worry that Aden’s
suffering will only increase.
“The
war of hunger has not started — yet,” said Ali Bamatraf, a grocer with
dwindling stocks, standing among empty food boxes that would not soon be
replaced.
As
war engulfs Yemen, no place in the beleaguered country has suffered as
severely as Aden, a southern port city captive to ferocious street
fighting for the better part of a harrowing month. Foreign navies patrol
its waters and warplanes circle above, blockading a city that is
steadily crumbling under reckless fire from tanks and heavy guns.
Areas Houthis control
or are able to operate.
SAUDI
ARABIA
YEMEN
Sana
Red
Sea
Houthi
expansion
after Saudi
airstrikes.
Aden
Gulf of Aden
DJIBOUTI
150 Miles
SOMALIA
“Damaged.
Ruined,” said Faris al-Shuaibi, a professor of English literature at
Aden University, searching for the words to describe the beaten-up
neighborhood around him. “Everything is destroyed.”
The clashes began in mid-March
as a feud between forces allied with two members of Yemen’s political
elite: southern fighters loyal to President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who
had retreated to Aden after being driven from the capital, against Houthi militiamen and security forces allied with Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s former leader.
Weeks later, the war has spread and become far more complicated. Saudi Arabia unleashed an air offensive last month that has failed to stop the Houthi advance. Saudi officials are threatening a ground invasion, seeing the hand of Iran, their regional nemesis, behind the Houthis, whose leaders follow an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
For
many residents of Aden, though, each day has only simplified the
conflict, reducing it to an existential fight. After Mr. Hadi and most
of his loyal fighters quit the city, residents dusted off personal
weapons and formed their own units to fight the advance of the Houthis
and their allies — the latest northern invaders, they say, seeking to
dominate the south.
North and South Yemen were separate countries until 1990
and fought a brief civil war four years later. For decades, southern
grievances over ill treatment by the rulers in the northern capital,
Sana, have festered, escalating in recent years into a movement openly
calling for secession.
Professor
Shuaibi was among thousands of people protesting peacefully a few
months ago in Aden for an independent state, in a square adorned with
pictures of southerners who had died in wars and at the hands of Mr.
Saleh’s security forces.
On
Thursday, he was back in the streets with a gun, preparing to join
other residents fighting in the central district of Al Mualla.
The
local militias are loosely organized, dominated by young men focused on
securing their own neighborhoods, said Jamal Khulaqi, a 25-year-old
Yemeni-American from Buffalo who said he was helping with relief efforts
in the city. Most lack training and weapons apart from AK-47s.
Their
opponents are mostly security men loyal to Mr. Saleh, known for their
repression back when they were in power. Now, as militiamen, residents
say, they are unrestrained and more brutal. “They are bombing innocent
people, families,” Professor Shuaibi said.
The
Houthis, fighting all over the country, are a smaller part of the force
in Aden, their ranks filled with many teenagers and even some children.
Some of the young Houthis who had been captured seemed filled with
religious zeal and said they had been told they were going to Aden to
fight Al Qaeda, the Sunni extremists the Houthis regard as their principal foe, Professor Shuaibi said.
“There is no Al Qaeda here,” he said.
Map
Mapping Chaos in Yemen
Annotated maps showing the Houthi rebels’ drive south, U.S. airstrikes and historical divisions.
The
city has been carved up into sectors guarded by fighters with guns
slung over their shoulders, drained by the stresses of war but still
full of swagger. One fighter, Mohamed Saleh Salem, 38, called the local
fighters “ferocious” and vowed that the Houthis would not advance, while
adding that he had not had a bath in days.
The
Houthis and their allies, armed with tanks and other heavy weapons,
have captured several strategic areas, including a coastal road. But
their hold on the city remains shaky, and they are vulnerable to
repeated attacks by the local groups, which are fighting in familiar
neighborhoods.
The
Houthi forces respond savagely to any assault, Mr. Khulaqi said. “When
someone shoots at them, they fire on buildings,” he said as he drove a
friend through the city’s checkpoints to catch the only bus still
shuttling people out of Aden and across the country to the Saudi border.
As
dangerous as it is to travel outside the city, it has become deadly to
stay. Volunteer medics said that at least 198 people had been killed and
nearly 2,000 people injured in the city since March 25. The estimate
was probably conservative: Ambulances have not been able to reach people
in neighborhoods with the heaviest fighting, said Khadeja bin Bourek, a
volunteer aid worker, who said there was also a shortage of medics at
government hospitals.
Valerie
Pierre, the project coordinator for Doctors Without Borders in Aden,
said an average of 15 to 20 patients, most of them gunshot victims,
arrived every day at a hospital where the group is working and living.
The group had just received its first shipment of medical supplies by
boat from the tiny East African nation of Djibouti, across a narrow
strait from Aden, but still had only a third of the supplies it needed.
Ms.
Pierre, a midwife, arrived in Aden in January, finding a “beautiful
city, a very historic place.” Now, she and the other doctors are
sequestered, listening to gun battles, sometimes distant, sometimes just
outside the hospital walls.
“I am full of adrenaline, so I am still running, still motivated,” she said. “It is very scary.”
Elsewhere
in the city, residents were hauling water in buckets because water
tanks supplying at least four districts had been destroyed or cut off by
the fighting. In many places, only a few hours of electricity was
available each day. Only local neighborhood stores were open, and by 7
p.m., the streets were empty, except for the fighters.
Saudi
airstrikes have mostly targeted the outskirts of the city, in an
attempt to cut off the supply lines of the Houthis and their allies.
There also appears to have been shelling from warships, though no one
seems to know for sure.
“Aden is almost the only city in Yemen to be attacked by air, sea and land,” said Nashwan al-Othmani, a resident.
The
siege has left little time to think about the political arguments
dividing the country. No one seems to be clamoring for the return of Mr.
Hadi, whom the Saudis have vowed to restore as president.
“There
are many who criticize Hadi,” Mr. Othmani said. “There are many who
accuse him of bringing the struggle to Aden and then leaving.”
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