"Tourists were left stranded on Yemen's Socotra Island after commercial flights were suspended amid escalating security tensions in the country's south, prompting Yemenia Airways to begin evacuation flights to Saudi Arabia. Footage shows foreign visitors waiting along streets, sitting with travel bags, using phones and talking among themselves as they await onward transport after flight cancellations. "I was supposed to fly out on the 2nd of January. I'm here for six more days. The flight got cancelled because of the situation. We're just dealing with getting a new ticket here," shared a tourist from Germany. "The situation is not the very best, but we're trying to make the best of it. We have our two operators who are taking care of us. We still have our tents. We still get our food provided and everything. So, it's not the worst situation," he added. According to Yemenia Airways, its first evacuation flight carried about 179 stranded tourists from Socotra to Jeddah, noting that further evacuations are being arranged to ensure the safety and return of remaining passengers. The Russian Embassy in Yemen stated in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that it had informed its nationals on the island that Yemenia Airways confirmed the operation of two additional commercial flights from Socotra to Jeddah on January 8 and 9. The disruption follows clashes over the past week in Yemen's southern governorates of Hadramout and Al-Mahrah, involving forces of the Southern Transitional Council and Saudi-backed Yemeni units, which ended with government-aligned forces taking control of both regions."