WTF?? Desperation for Americans in Yemen as U.S. refuses to mount rescue [View all]

[cali]

A Michigan family with two toddlers and an infant was stranded in Yemen after being forced from its home by rebel gunmen. A California woman tried to flee through an arrangement with the embassy of Djibouti, but failed. A mother of four from New York also tried that route, at the State Department’s suggestion, only to hear the same reply: There would be no help.

These accounts are among dozens presented in a lawsuit filed Thursday by Arab and Muslim civil rights groups seeking to force the Obama administration into taking action to bring home U.S. citizens who are stuck in Yemen’s worsening conflict.

At least eight other countries – including Russia, China and India – have rescued their citizens, but the United States has refused to launch an evacuation effort. U.S. officials claim that Yemen, where a U.S.-backed, Saudi-led air campaign is pummeling targets, is too dangerous for U.S. personnel to risk their lives, though U.S. aircraft have refueled Saudi bombers for the last two days, Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren said.

The U.S. Embassy is shuttered, with all the diplomats and security guards taken to safety weeks ago. From Washington, the State Department directs remaining citizens to hotlines that don’t work and to foreign embassies that can’t help, leading many stranded Americans to summarize the Obama administration’s response as: Good luck.

“All day the question I ask myself is: Why is the United States not helping us?” said Sallah Elhushayshi, 21, of Brooklyn, who said he went to Yemen last year to get married and visit family. As he spoke by telephone from the city of Taiz, gunfire crackled in the background.

“Did you hear that? It’s a war now,” he said. “People are fighting, guns everywhere. We feel afraid. We have nothing. We’re worried about food and water every day. We feel hopeless, really.”

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2015/04/09/262695/desperation-for-americans-in-yemen.html#storylink=cpy