For a few days, Adnan has prevented his son Muhannad (15 years old) from leaving the house to play in the street with his friends in the center of the Yemeni city of Ibb, out of fear of kidnapping or disappearance, after incidents were recorded of the disappearance of a number of teenagers from the city under mysterious circumstances.< /p>

Amid the security chaos that Ibb Governorate (193 kilometers south of Sanaa) and a number of its districts are suffering from, human rights sources confirmed the return of the phenomenon of the disappearance of young people, in parallel with doubts about the Houthi group, which is carrying out polarization and recruitment campaigns to its ranks in various areas in the governorate.

In the last two weeks, Ibb Governorate and a number of its districts recorded about 9 disappearances of teenagers, some of which were announced by families on social media platforms.

Adnan, a pseudonym for a car dealer who lives in the Al-Mashna neighborhood in Ibb, complained to Asharq Al-Awsat that the phenomenon of the disappearance of young teenagers had reappeared again in a remarkable manner, revealing information he had obtained indicating that 3 teenagers had disappeared at simultaneous times in the city. Ibb during the last week.

The re-escalation of this type of incidents led to a state of panic among residents in the city of Ibb and its suburbs, after new and mysterious disappearances were recorded, which prompted Adnan, and other parents, to prevent their children from leaving their homes except when necessary.

Frequent accidents

Some of the declared and undeclared disappearance incidents that Ibb and other districts witnessed, according to sources, were concentrated in neighborhoods belonging to the Al-Mishna, Al-Dhahar, and rural Ibb districts, the most recent of which was Osama Muhammad Ali Mahdi (17 years old) being disappeared in Al-Jabajab neighborhood, within the Al-Mishna neighborhood in the same city.< /p>

A person close to Osama's family explained that he disappeared under mysterious circumstances, after leaving the house in the same neighborhood in the morning to go to school. He said that they have not yet been able to know his fate, nor the party behind his disappearance.

The families of the disappeared teenagers in Ibb hold the Houthi security services fully responsible for the increasing incidents of disappearance to which their children are exposed, especially since local and international human rights reports have previously monitored hundreds of similar incidents over the past years.

Some residents accuse what they said were “organized gangs affiliated with security leaders” in Ibb of being behind the resurgence of kidnapping crimes against young people in the governorate.

About two weeks ago, 3 teenagers disappeared under mysterious circumstances. The first is called Maher Muti’ Shayea (15 years old) from the village of Sawad Bani Muharram in the Ibb countryside, and the second is called Iyad Salah Salim (15 years old) from the village of Al-Marzoum in the same district, while the third is called Badr Fouad Al-Ghalab. (14 years old) from Khawlan isolation in the Madhikhara district, west of Ibb.

Instead of the families of the disappeared informing the Houthi security services so that they can carry out their role, such as searching and revealing their whereabouts and finding out the reasons, most of them prefer to launch urgent appeals through social media to help them search.

A human rights activist from Ibb, who preferred to remain anonymous, linked the resurgence of the phenomenon of disappearance of teenagers in the governorate to what the Houthi group is carrying out these days in terms of widespread recruitment and recruitment campaigns for children and young people in various areas, taking advantage of the events in Gaza and its current ongoing conflict with the American and British forces. In the Red Sea.

The human rights activist called for serious local and international measures to be taken to protect the rights of young people from violations, especially in Ibb Governorate, which has the highest rates of kidnapping crimes and daily and repeated violations against the population.

There are no official statistics that clarify the real number of young people and teenagers who are subject to mysterious disappearance in Ibb and its districts, except for some estimates that indicate the disappearance of hundreds in various governorates controlled by the Houthis.