SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Rescue workers in northern Yemen have recovered the bodies of 13 people who went missing after a flash flood inundated a village, authorities said Wednesday, as officials said 99 people have been killed since the start of heavy seasonal rains.
Yemen’s current monsoon season has been particularly deadly, with some experts saying the war-wrecked country is increasingly vulnerable to severe weather events caused by climate change.
The Al-Masirah TV channel run by the Houthi rebels who control the country’s north said the 13 bodies were recovered in Melhan district of Al-Mahwit province. It said a child had been rescued but 20 other people were missing.
Yemen was already the poorest Arab nation before civil war began in 2014, when the Iran-backed Houthis took control of the capital, Sanaa, and much of the north, forcing the government to flee to the south and then to neighboring Saudi Arabia.
The Houthis in a statement on Wednesday said 86 people had lost their lives in flooding in Hodeida, Reema and Hajjah provinces since the monsoon season started in mid-July. The statement, issued after a meeting called by the prime minister to address the emergency response, said some 33,000 families had been affected by the floods.
Yemen’s Red Crescent had projected that the country would see less precipitation overall this year but that flooding events would be more severe in the monsoon season. The rainy season begins in late March, and rains intensify in July through mid-August.
The World Health Organization this week said Yemenis were suffering “disproportionately from climate change due to their already undermined capacities, limited resources and fragile infrastructure.” It warned that more heavy rains were expected in the coming weeks.
The conflict makes determining the floods’ true toll difficult.
A Saudi-led coalition entered the war in March 2015, backed at the time by the U.S., in an effort to restore the internationally recognized government. The war has killed more than 150,000 people including civilians and combatants. It has largely deteriorated into a stalemate and caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
