HODEIDA,Yemen – Nearly two years after the fire of Yemen’s civil conflict had largely been quelled, Manal Faqirah awoke at dawn on Jan 12 to the sound of bombs raining on her home city of Hodeida.
“When I heard the first blast, I was terrified, I thought it was a dream,” the 36-year-old civil servant told AFP, saying she was awakened from her sleep by the strikes.
“When the second blast came, I knew this was a strike, this was war,” she continued, recalling how she curled up underneath her covers at the sound of the third strike on the coastal city.
She said she was so afraid of the sound of bombing that it felt “like Armageddon”.
Ms Faqirah is a resident of Hodeida, a strategic port city overlooking the Red Sea that saw a large share of the strikes by US and British forces targeting Houthi rebels over their attacks on shipping.
The Houthis have launched a series of attacks on vessels suspected to have links to Israel in a bid to push for a ceasefire in the war that has raged in the Gaza Strip for more than three months.
“I thought about the children and mothers and fathers. Who is being struck?… I feared for my country, for my family members,” Ms Faqirah said.
Hodeida province, whose seaports are a lifeline for millions in the Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen, is a key launch site for rockets and drones targeting Red Sea shipping.
The rebels have also been holding the Galaxy Leader, a merchant vessel linked to an Israeli businessman that was seized on Nov 19, at Salif Port, north of the city.
‘Nowhere to hide’
Pharmacist Assem Mohamed, 33, was awoken at 2:30am by the sound of not only the blasts but the cries of his child.
“When the strikes hit, my youngest son awoke crying in fear and screaming ‘firecrackers’,” the father of three said. At first, he “thought there was a wedding in the alley”.
The three-year-old boy was too young to remember the days of fierce fighting in Hodeida between a Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebels.
Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen in 2015 on behalf of the internationally recognised government against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who had over-run the capital Sanaa the previous year.
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