Two single mothers who fled their village three weeks ago are struggling to feed and keep their children warm in Yemen’s besieged city of Taiz, where they shelter in a damaged building and collect and sell plastic bottles to survive.
Taiz is home to about half of the 300,000 people displaced across Yemen by the latest wave of fighting, according to the U.N. The city has remained largely cut off since Oct. 3, when clashes intensified between the Saudi-backed government and Iran-aligned Houthi rebels, preventing humanitarian aid from entering and trapping civilians unable to flee.
Fatima Abdullah Qassem said the families escaped on foot in the middle of the night after fighting reached their village of al-Sayahi in the al-Dhabab area, west of Taiz.
The families spent two days sleeping on the street because the damaged building where they now live was too dirty, she said.
"The building is open, see, it's open with tarpaulins set up. We put up tarpaulins, and it's freezing. We have no blankets, we have nothing, I swear to God," she said, gesturing to their makeshift living space.
Qassem, a mother of eight who is separated from her husband, lost one of her sons in a landmine explosion in 2017.
She and another mother, Intizar Ahmed Saeed, used to sell vegetables but have now turned to collecting and selling plastic bottles to support their children.
Saeed, a widow and mother of seven, said the money she earns from collecting plastic bottles is not enough to feed her children.
"My life is a struggle every day, by God, a struggle. I tell you, I work for 1,500 (rials, or $0.96), and it is not enough. I go begging for potatoes, tomatoes, pepper ... I have girls, all of them inside, where do I take them? There's no one to work hard to look after them. The man of the house (referring to her son) is 15 years old, and these days there's no work," Saeed said.
