Yemenis have already endured years of conflict but fear things will deteriorate further if the US ramps up its campaign. Sanaa, Yemen – Mukhtar Ahmed was cycling his bike in northern Sanaa’s al-Jiraf neighbourhood when the earth shook under his feet. Deafening explosions reverberated through the air, followed by the sound of panicked screams.
It was a Saturday evening, shortly after sunset, when individuals were at home for iftar during the holy month of Ramadan. I dismounted the bike and ran into an alley. I believed it would be impossible to survive,” the 26-year-old restaurant delivery courier told Al Jazeera. “The sheer horror of those explosions could kill.”
Mukhtar did not know what had created the thunderous boom that was heard all over Yemen’s crowded capital. But he subsequently realized the United States was bombing Yemen. A series of American air strikes had killed over 50 individuals. The bombs rained down on the area of the political headquarters of the Houthi rebel movement (officially known as Ansar Allah), Yemen’s de facto northwest rulers.
It was the start of a continuing US bombing campaign that could bring a new era of war and instability to Yemen. On March 7, a week before the US strikes, the Houthis set a four-day ultimatum for Israel to remove its blockade on the importation of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. Otherwise, the Yemeni faction threatened to start attacking Israel-targeted ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza.
Those attacks had ceased when the currently-broken Gaza ceasefire started in January but for the previous 15 months, the Houthis had immobilized shipping in one of the world’s most significant waterways and launched projectiles at Israel.
The US and the United Kingdom conducted hundreds of air strikes against what were said to be Houthi targets, such as weapons stores, missile launch sites and airports. Israel has also bombed Yemen. The apparent intention of the attacks was to “degrade” the military capabilities of the Iran-allied Houthis.
However, the fresh US airstrikes have targeted residential areas where top Houthi leaders are said to live with little consideration for civilian life. Secondly, the Houthis had not conducted any attacks despite their threat.
With this new trend under US President Donald Trump, war, scarcity, and displacement nightmares are lurking in the minds of Yemeni civilians, who have lived for years under dire conditions since the start of the nation’s civil war in 2014 between the Houthis and Saudi-backed, United Nations-recognised Yemen government.
The war on the ground in Yemen has effectively been put on ice since 2022 as the Houthis and Saudi Arabia negotiated. However, the negotiations have failed to stop the humanitarian crisis in the nation, with millions of people going hungry.
