...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic...amid rising insecurity in the war-torn country.
The ICRC said Thursday that the staffers had been moved out of Yemen to Djibouti because of security incidents and threats.
ICRC spokeswoman Marie-Claire Feghali said some 450 employees, including dozens of expatriate staff, remained in Yemen.
Feghali said the partial evacuations had affected many of ICRC’s aid programs, including surgical, water and food assistance missions.
She called on all warring sides in Yemen’s conflict to provide security guarantees so the agency can keep running its aid delivery and other programs.
"Our current activities have been blocked, threatened and directly targeted in recent weeks, and we see a vigorous attempt to instrumentalize our organization as a pawn in the conflict," the ICRC said in a statement.
The evacuation comes after unknown button men rubbed out an ICRC employee on April 21. The employee, a Lebanese national, was killed while traveling in his car to visit a prison in the southwestern Yemeni city of Ta'izz.
The ICRC statement said rising security threats to its personnel had made it effectively impossible to continue some missions.
"While the Yemen delegation has received numerous threats in the past, we cannot now accept additional risk less than two months after a gunman killed a staff member," said the statement, adding, "The security of our staff, who are being intimidated by parties to the conflict, is a non-negotiable prerequisite for our presence and work in Yemen and an absolute priority."