Within months of Dr. Ymeri’s return to Kosovo, the war broke out following a raid known as the Prekaz massacre, led by Serbia’s special forces. During the raid, the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) leader Adem Jashari, his brother Hamëz and nearly 60 of his family members were killed. During the raid there was only a sole survivor of the immediate Jashari family, Besarta Jashari, Hamëz Jashari's daughter. The deaths of Jashari and his family prompted outrage and international backlash against Serbia leading to the Kosovo war, where nearly half of the country’s population was driven out of their homes and over 10,000 killed.

The Jashari raid lasted for a few days and other Jashari relatives would flee Prekaz located in central Kosovo to neighboring cities and towns. Dr. Ymeri’s sister in-law is married to a Jashari where she would end up hosting forty of them escaping the terror that was unfolding. Dr. Ymeri would be in attendance giving medical aid to those injured from the Jashari extended family and along with other doctors working on the ground to help refugees in dire need. As a new doctor who had just entered the field Dr. Ymeri recalls the experience as “traumatic”. She would spend the next two years giving aid to refugees in northern Mitrovica until nearly the end of war. Northern Mitrovica is a Serb majority region in Kosovo that has been involved in ongoing conflict and tension throughout the years – most recently last week after an explosion toward critical water infrastructure, prompting terrorist attack allegations against neighboring Serbia from Pristina.

During the war, Dr. Ymeri recalls heightened safety concerns in the region, living among Serbian neighbors, she says her family was evacuated and she would witness her family three story home up in flames. “My father worked in Germany to provide for us, his work of 30 years gone, just like that, we packed our whole life in a backpack”. Dr. Ymeri spent six weeks in Macedonia's refugee camp. She recalls walking by foot, spending days sleeping outside with little to no food as they attempted to cross the border to make it to the refugee camp. She recalls people crying, children and seniors in distress including her mother; many people were missing family members including her fiancé who lived in Canada and her father in Germany “They had no idea about our whereabouts whether we were dead or alive”.