UN: 300,000 people lost everything in recent Yemen flooding

Heavy rains and flash floods left 300,000 people in Yemen without their homes, crops and livestocks in the last three months, adding to the crisis in the war-torn country, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Friday.

Heavy rains and flash floods left 300,000 people in Yemen without their homes, crops and livestocks in the last three months, adding to the crisis in the war-torn country, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Friday.

In the worst-hit regions in the central Marib province and along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden coasts, at least 148 people died in the last two months, UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic told a press briefing in Geneva.

The flooding has increased the pressure on many people who were already uprooted by the ongoing conflict, including thousands of internally displaced people who were affected by a dam that broke in Sanaa province, releasing 250,000 cubic meters of water.

“Levels of desperation and despair are rising as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis plumbs to new depths,” Mahecic said.

UNHCR is barely able to handle the fallout of the floods and will run out of shelters and emergency relief items within weeks unless it gets additional funding, he warned.

After more than five years of war between Yemen’s Saudi-backed government and Iran-linked Houthi rebels, more than 80 per cent of Yemen’s population relies on humanitarian aid.