The country, which has been embroiled in armed conflict for about a decade, faces widespread flooding almost every year from torrential rains, and climate change has exacerbated the frequency and intensity of the events.
Since the end of July, the floods have caused 36 deaths in Hodeidah province, 9 in Ib province, 8 in Marib and 7 in Taiz, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said yesterday.
At least 600 people were injured in Hodeidah and Marib provinces alone, OCHA added, while a total of 13 people were missing in Hodeidah and Taiz.
“Public infrastructures were affected, including schools, roads and health facilities. The lives of many, already hanging by a thread, were swept away by the waters,” OCHA underlined.
A total of 38,285 families, or nearly 268,000 people, were affected, according to the same source, which noted that “ongoing extreme weather is expected to continue into September”; new warnings were issued “for heavy rains,” especially in Imp.
In recent years, Yemen has been experiencing a worsening of the frequency and intensity of rainfall due to climate change, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (ICRC) and the Norwegian Red Cross highlighted in their 2023 report.
The country was hit by major floods in 2019, 2020 and 2021, they explained.
A war between the Houthi rebels and the internationally recognized government has been raging in Yemen since 2014. The armed conflict has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, directly and indirectly, and has caused one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet, according to the UN.
The armed conflict was internationalized in 2015, with the intervention of a Saudi-led military alliance to support the troops of the internationally recognized government of the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country.
The survival of more than half of Yemen’s population depends on humanitarian aid.
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