Cyclone Chapala kills 3, injures 100 on Yemeni island
ADEN: A rare tropical cyclone packing hurricane-force winds killed three people and injured scores on the Yemeni island of Socotra on Monday, residents and officials said, and then headed for an Al Qaeda-controlled town on the mainland.And from Wunderground (now with more IBM!):
Amateur pictures and videos on social media, which could not be immediately verified, showed torrents of water washing through the streets of the Socotra provincial capital Hadibu.
"Three people were killed, around 100 have been injured," said a local official, without describing the causes of death.
Mohammed Alarqbi of the Socotra Environment Office said torrential rains had pounded impoverished coastal villages.
"Around 1,500 families have fled to the interior and to the mountains. There's absolutely no help coming from the outside."
Situated in the Arabian Sea and slightly larger than Majorca or Rhode Island, isolated Socotra is home to hundreds of exotic plant species found nowhere else on earth.
Its 50,000 residents speak their own language.
Long remote, the island has become especially cut off from mainland Yemen by a seven-month war there between rebels and a coalition of Arab states led by Saudi Arabia.
Yemen, generally arid and hot, receives relatively little rainfall and the infrastructure in the Arabian Peninsula's poorest country is ill-equipped built to handle large deluges....MORE
Tropical Cyclone Chapala Expected to Hit Yemen, Then Saudi Arabia
