Obock , Djibouti ( CNN ) Amina Ali Qassim is sitting with her youngest grandchild on her lap , wiping away tears with her headscarf . Only a few months old , this is the baby girl whose ears she desperately tried to cover the night the aerial bombardment started . She lay awake , she says , in a village mosque on the Yemeni island of Birim , counting explosions as the baby cried . It could have been worse though . They could have still been in their house when the first missile landed . `` Our neighbor shouted to my husband 'you have to leave , they 're coming . ' And we just ran . As soon as we left the house , the first missile fell right by it and then a second on it . It burned everything to the ground , '' Qassim tells us . Qassim and her family fled Birim at first light , piling in with three other families . Twenty-five of them squeezed into one boat setting sail through the Bab al-Mandab Strait to Djibouti . Bab al-Mandab is one of the busiest waterways in the world , a thoroughfare for oil tankers and cargo ships . It 's now being crossed by desperate Yemenis in rickety fishing boats seeking refuge from the conflict threatening to engulf their country . Qassim 's son Mohamed describes the families ' journey across this part of the Red Sea as `` a window into hell . '' `` The women were violently ill , '' he tells us . `` It was a catastrophe . '' It took them five hours to cross into the north of Djibouti , where the government is providing the refugees with temporary shelter in this unfinished orphanage here in Obock . And the U.N. says thousands more refugees are expected . Qassim and her family will soon have to move to the plastic tents that have been prepared for them on the dusty outskirts of the town , taking with them only the collection of plastic mats and pots neatly stacked in the corner . It 's all that remains of everything they once owned . Her two daughters are trapped back in Yemen , in Taiz . She has n't been able to reach them and the worry she says is almost unbearable . I ask her how many days it was after the Saudi aerial bombardment began that they left . She looks at me and laughs , `` How many days would you have stayed ? '' Then she goes quiet , looking down at the granddaughter in her lap . Finally she tells me , `` I thought she would never be able to stop screaming . That the fear would stay with her forever . '' `` May God please have mercy on Yemen . ''
Amina Ali Qassim 's family sought shelter in a mosque before fleeing Yemen . The Yemeni government has said it is investigating the incident and will take appropriate action.