Escalating violence in Yemen could drive up the number of internally displaced people in the civil war-torn country to more than 230,000 over the next three months, according to UN estimates.
More than 130,000 people have already fled heavy fighting within the country since early September, representatives of the UN refugee agency UNHCR in Geneva said on Tuesday.
In addition, more than 3,000 refugees from Yemen have arrived in Djibouti in East Africa. UNHCR expects that number could rise to 10,000 over the next six months.
The vast majority of those displaced were driven from their homes in the Taiz province at the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, where the Iran-backed Houthi militia has advanced in recent weeks.
Even before the latest fighting, Yemen was already home to one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. More than 22 million people in the country need humanitarian assistance, according to UNHCR.
