Chinese navy carried teacher from danger

Pakistani teacher Saima Tanveer show little emotion as she recounts her family's terrifying dash through war-torn Aden, dodging bullets and shells to reach the port and flee Yemen on a Chinese naval vessel.

The 35-year-old was among around 170 Pakistanis who escaped the country on April 3, along with her accountant husband and two disabled children.

Pakistan has evacuated hundreds of its citizens from Yemen since a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia began bombing rebels last month to try to restore exiled President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to power.

Tanveer's two happy years in Yemen, teaching at a Pakistani-run school in the southern city of Aden, came to a sudden end on March 23 when Houthi Shiite rebels descended on the city.

Now back in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, Tanveer described with remarkable composure her desperate race through Aden to reach the Chinese ship that took them to Djibouti to fly home.

For more than a week they had been forced to wait as gunfire and explosions rattled around them, changing their location every night, never knowing whether the next shell would have their names on it.

Finally the ship arrived, but reaching it from the hotel where Tanveer and other Pakistanis were hiding out meant a gut-wrenching half-hour drive through a city where street battles were raging.

"That was too horrible a journey for us. We moved from the airport area, there was too much shelling at that time - two bullets hit our car, tanks were moving. They were firing, but we had to save our lives," Tanveer said.

The Chinese ship took the evacuees to Djibouti where a special Pakistan International Airlines flight returned them to Islamabad on April 3.

Tanveer had lived through bombings in Peshawar, which has borne the brunt of Pakistan's bloody struggles with Islamist militants.

But she said Yemen's complex tangle of tribal, sectarian and political factions was as bewildering as it was frightening.

Tanveer and her family lived with 20 or so other Pakistanis in a shared compound. After the rebels reached Yemen, she said, locals warned them they may be attacked for being foreigners.

"They said to us: 'If someone knocks at the door, don't allow your male persons to go outside. Maybe they will shoot your men, but being a female they may give you some sympathy'," she said.

Soon after the Saudi coalition began its air raids, Pakistan - which has rebuffed Riyadh's request to send troops to Yemen - began evacuating its citizens.

Despite her ordeal, Tanveer said she hoped to one day to return to Yemen.

"We want peace and security there. If there will be, we are ready to work again for Yemen because there are very good people there," she said.