LONDON (AlertNet) - Escalating fighting in northern Yemen is preventing vital supplies reaching thousands of people fleeing a war between government forces and rebels, aid groups say.
Cut off from help, many of the displaced are ill, surviving on little food and in rough shelters in cold winter weather. Aid groups and the authorities are building more camps as existing camps are overcrowded and people continue coming in.
"More people are coming out of the conflict area. The trend is of a growing number of refugees," Dorothea Krimitsas, a spokeswoman at the International Committee of the Red Cross.
"Most people leave with nothing. They flee their homes and have nothing."
Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, is also trying to combat threats from resurgent al Qaeda fighters as well as quash a Shi'ite rebellion in the north and separatist sentiment in the south.
Located on the Arabian Peninsula's strategically important southern tip, Yemen was thrust into the foreground of the U.S.-led war against al Qaeda after a Yemen-based wing of the Islamist group said it was behind a failed bombing last month.
Authorities launched an operation this week near the capital to root out al Qaeda militants. Aid groups said the raid had not affected their efforts to assist an estimated 175,000 internally displaced people in and around the northern city of Sa'ada, which is the focus of the fighting against Shi'ite rebels.
Their priority was to ensure safe access to people that had fled the fighting, aid workers said.
"If intervention does not happen soon, people could lose their lives," Khalid Al Mulad, the Yemen country director for British-based Islamic Relief, told AlertNet.
Shi'ite rebels have fought government forces on and off since 2004. They say they are marginalised and discriminated against. The fighting has also dragged in Saudi Arabia, which ordered its air force to bomb rebel positions around the border.
Yemen's government limits access around the conflict zone because of the fighting, but Al Mulad said Islamic Relief had been allowed to venture into new areas in the last week.
They found over 1,000 people sheltering in one remote village.
"They were in very bad condition," Al Mulad said. "They were sleeping in open yards and in huts. They desperately need blankets, shelter, medical supplies. They have been exposed to some very cold weather."
But the bombardment and fighting make it dangerous to deliver the aid.
Also complicating aid delivery is the fact that most of the displaced are not living in camps but are scattered among host communities, said Karim Khalil, an analyst at the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre in Geneva. Only about 17 percent of the displaced were staying in camps, he added.
"There is a large percentage outside the camps, and greater attention is needed to respond to their needs where such access is possible," he said.
Overcrowding in camps is a serious problem, said Al Mulad from Islamic Relief, citing the example of one camp where 20,000 people live - three times higher than what it is meant to accommodate.
"As you can imagine, it's a bit of a nightmare," he said.
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