24 people missing after floods tore through a northern Yemen village

Floodwaters swept through a village in northern Yemen, inundating homes and shops and leaving at least 24 people missing, authorities said Wednesday.

Heavy rains over the past few days pounded the Melhan district in Al-Mahwit province, triggering floods that caved in seven homes and four shops, according to a statement by Yemen's Houthi rebels.

Yemen was already the poorest Arab nation before it was plunged into civil war in 2014, when Iran-backed Houthi rebels took control of the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country's north, forcing the government to flee to the south, then to Saudi Arabia.

Seasonal monsoon rains in the late summer often turn into flooding in Yemen, but there are indications that the country is experiencing more extreme weather events due to climate change.

A 2024 report by Yemen's Red Crescent projected that the country will see less precipitation overall, but that flooding events are expected to be more severe in the monsoon season. Yemen's rainy season begins in late March, and rains intensify in July through mid-August.

The World Health Organization said this week that 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 and months. Though the country's conflict and disorder makes determining the true toll of the floods difficult, the organization said that at least 36 people had been killed in the western province of Hodeida alone by flooding in recent weeks, and in the central province of Marib there are roughly 8,400 internally displaced families.

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, and in recent years deteriorated largely into a stalemate and caused one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.