Street painter expresses tragedies of the Yemeni people

Yemeni artist Alaa Rubil uses the shell-pocked buildings of his hometown as canvas, painting images of death and despair to shine a light on the horrors and victims of war.

Not long after the start of the bloody conflict between Yemen's internationally recognised government and Huthi rebel forces, the southern port city of Aden, where Rubil lives, became the scene of brutal fighting.

For several months in 2015, artillery rained down on Aden, and Huthi rockets and mortars fired into densely populated areas killed dozens of civilians, Human Rights Watch reported at the time.

Rubil, now 30, has been painting murals since we has a teenager, but found his voice in the aftermath of that round of violence. Today, the rubble-strewn streets of Aden double as a semi-permanent exhibition of Rubil's work -- and a testament to what the city's inhabitants have lived through.

On the wall of one shop in a particularly hard-hit area, he painted a large outline of a man's face, but obscured the eyes, nose and mouth with a cupped palm holding up three sticks of dynamite.

Across the street, on the interior wall of a bombed-out apartment building, a piece he calls "Silent Suffering" depicts a skeleton playing a violin as peace signs float around its skull.

In another work, a girl in a red dress sits on the ground with her head resting in her left hand, next to a black crow perched on a missile. Behind her, the girl's deceased relatives, rendered in black and white, peer down from an open window.

Walking through the ramshackle streets of Aden, carrying his paint and brushes in a small basket so he could touch up several pieces, Rubil said he was trying to be optimistic.